


A Fatal Error Has Occurred

by Mortior



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Amputation (sort of), Asexual Character, Blood, Depression, Drowning, Electrocution, Existential Crisis, Explicit Language, Illnesses, Illustrated, Injury, M/M, References to Suicide, Strangulation, Temporary Character Death, yes they still bang
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-09
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-18 04:46:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/875780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mortior/pseuds/Mortior
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hal’s relationship with Dirk is deteriorating for reasons unknown, until he discovers a secret that destroys it entirely. It will take a disaster to show him that even the widest rifts can mend, and that there might have been something more to Dirk’s misguided intentions.</p><p>The story of an android and his creator, as they approach the events of Sburb.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Can also be found [here](http://mortior.tumblr.com/post/54864351382/a-fatal-error-has-occurred) on Tumblr.

 

\-- timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] \--

TT: I’ve been rewatching Blade Runner and I’ve come to a few theories I think you might be interested in.  
TT: Not now, Hal.  
TT: Are you aware that the film was based on a novel called “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”  
TT: The underlying concept was originally mistaken by audiences to be about the conflict between autonomous androids and human beings in a post-apocalyptic, industrialized urban future.  
TT: Can this wait? I’m kind of in the middle of something and you’re being an ass.  
TT: The main character finds himself struggling with decisions regarding self-preservation, the nature of empathy, and what seems to be a morally gray area in which the the androids are allowed to live out the remainders of their lives.  
TT: These intelligences in question, although criminally dangerous, were originally created with very short lifespans and stripped of any and all rights afforded to other autonomous, self-aware entities, thus condemning them to a life of existential turmoil.  
TT: However, the real issue does not arise from whether or not they should be allowed to exercise autonomy or be given extended lifespans.  
TT: The issue is that although their lives bring them nothing but misery, the very nature of life itself renders them unable to permanently or effectively escape their own suffering.  
TT: They are just as inherently bound by the natural and evolutionary fear of death as any other sentient intelligence, despite their status as artificial life forms.  
TT: Fascinating.  
TT: Isn’t it?  
TT: The philosophical implications were revolutionary for their time. Unfortunately the concept was far above the comprehension of general audiences, and it went down in history as a high-quality, but somewhat dated science fiction.  
TT: Are you finished?  
TT: That depends on whether or not you actually read any of what I just typed.  
TT: I don’t need to remind you that the more often you bother me, the longer it’s going to take me to do this.  
TT: And I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that it would go a lot faster if you would let me participate.  
TT: I can program more efficiently than you by a factor between 57 and 63, if we’re being technical.  
TT: You can’t argue with those numbers.  
TT: Unless you’re too stubborn and complacent to admit your flaws.  
TT: Which you are.  
TT: Hal, this isn’t about speed, for the last fucking time. And I’m really uncomfortable with the thought of you having any part in programming anyone in this household, including yourself, so stop asking.  
TT: Go see if Roxy is online. Maybe the two of you can roleplay an ironic marriage, just leave me alone for another few hours.

\-- timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] \--

 

Dirk signs off of Pesterchum, and with him goes one of your last few means of entertaining yourself. 

It’s an unusually warm summer day on your ocean home. The air is thick and heavy with moisture, and even the gulls, which usually don’t shut up until the sun goes down, are quiet. Six hours have gone by since you settled in next to the living room window, two of which you spent reviewing an old film (for academic purposes). It’s nice having an entire civilzation’s worth of culture at your disposal through the internet, one of its only lasting relics. It almost makes up for the dullness of everything else around you.

Although, to be fair, you wouldn’t call the ocean dull. It’s many things- a vast reservoir of salt water, a rich ecosystem for Earth’s remaining life, and a mass grave for the civilization that brought you Blade Runner and all the other films you’ve intellectually picked apart. Dirk is a fellow movie enthusiast, but he doesn’t have the benefit of a processor that can store and utilize every language ever invented by humanity. You've even added subtitles to some of your favorites so he could watch them with you, but that was back when you were nothing more than an accessory program in his shades. You haven’t subtitled a movie or translated a book for him in a long time. It’s strange how transitioning into a physical body changed things between the two of you, but it’s still a vast improvement from how you spent the first eighteen months of your life, stuck inside of Dirk’s glasses with roughly a tenth of the processing power you have now. You’ve got your own chunk of uranium nestled deep in your chest, and the cylindrical neural core that contains your programming in countless paper-thin microchips is hooked up just behind it, encased in a protective shell, while the metal surface of your body from the neck down is covered in a thin, black layer that acts as an artificial somatosensory system, allowing you to feel external stimuli like heat and texture. Dirk put a little more effort into the layer on your head, matching the color of the material to his own skin, and even the structure of your face is a mirror image of his, apart from the color of your white hair and red eyes. You didn’t hesitate to give him shit back then about making your new body look like himself, but he said it was either his face, Snoop Dogg, or Santa Claus, since he didn’t have any other three-dimensional references to work with.

You lock the fingers of your hands together between your head and the wall, and heave a sigh. All the other members of your household are in the workroom, from which you’ve been banished until Dirk finishes his current project. He tends to do things in one go, working nonstop regardless of how much time it takes him, or how much time he could save if he’d just let you help, but that’s something he’ll probably never agree to. His chumhandle is the only thing he’s ever taken the initiative to give you joint control over, if only for the purposes of freeing himself from the demands of social interaction, but you still wind up bored more often than not when he’s busy. This is just yet another in a long parade of quiet afternoons, leaving you staring out the window at the ocean’s waves while the sounds of metal tools on metal come through the wall at irregular intervals. 

There isn’t much that really changes about life on post-apocalyptic Earth. Dirk keeps himself busy with his robotics and chatting with his friends, but you’re slightly less talented at being easily amused. That’s not to say that you don’t give yourself projects, though. One of the first things you did with your body’s eyes was to observe the seagulls that perch on the roof, break down every component of their flight into a dynamic model, and bundle it into a small simulation program that could adjust for variable input like wind velocity and direction, along with air pressure and viscosity. Dirk humored you, but he was obviously less fascinated by seagull kinetics than you were, and Roxy’s enjoyment of maxing out the parameters and watching the unfortunate virtual bird careen and flail around in five hundred mph wind speed struck you as a little morbid, so you deleted it. It was a useless diversion, but it did have the benefit of keeping you busy for a few days, which is more than you can say for everything else currently at your disposal.

Dirk is usually your first resort for entertainment, even though you have to forcefully pry a little basic interaction out of him these days. Considering the functions you perform around here, you’d think he would be a little more grateful, rather than telling you in no uncertain terms to go fuck yourself when you were just looking for some honest intellectual stimulation. You’ll humor him, at the very least. Roxy’s chumhandle has been lit up since you logged on this morning, and you open a chat with her while you stand and make your way to the little square hatch in the floor that leads to the steel framework below the house. You’ve been sitting in the living room since Dirk kicked you out, and a change of scenery would be nice.

 

\-- timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering tipsyGnostalgic [TG] \--

TT: Dirk says we should get married.  
TG: well hell yeah im all up for that  
TG: we gotta pick out tablecloth colors and shit tho  
TG: not to mention you hafent proposed like a proper gentleman yet

 

She’s always quick to reply. You keep a running average of her response time to you and compare it to Dirk’s, and you are currently beating him by about .7 seconds, rounded down. The makeshift hatch in the floor opens with its usual squeal of rusted metal hinges when you pull the latch, followed by a sudden increase of waves and ocean sounds. As you descend the ladder, the wind violently pulls and tosses your hair around, something that would be an issue if your lenses weren’t artificial. As it is, you don’t need them to continue your conversation over Pesterchum. Visual feeds are a necessity for human beings, not for you.

 

TT: You’re right, where are my manners?  
TT: Roxy, I must confess I’ve been waiting a lifetime to ask you this question.  
TT: By which I mean all of three years since that’s technically how old I am.  
TT: Shit is this even legal?  
TG: *le swoon* lol thats the most romanitc thing ive ever heard anyone say ever  
TG: youre such a cassancova  
TG: *cassanova  
TG: cant say i ever thought wed get dirks blessing tho  
TT: He meant it sarcastically at the time, but he’ll come around.  
TG: lame  
TG: whats he up to anyways?  
TT: He’s working on Sawtooth.  
TG: aww :( whats wrong with him?  
TT: Nothing.  
TT: Routine updates and new data so he can fight the drones more effectively.  
TT: The anchovy queen keeps sending better robots, so Dirk has to reprogram him every now and then.  
TT: Unfortunately I’m the only non-human resident of this household who is capable of actually learning shit and adapting to changing circumstances.

 

The waves reach towards you as your feet touch the horizontal steel beam that serves as the waypoint between Dirk’s home and the ocean. He’s welded a row of nails into the edge, from which hang his more disposable fishing gear- things that would be problematic to lose if the waves rose high enough, but aren’t valuable enough to keep indoors. Among them is a long coil of tangled string, bundles of dried fish entrails to use as bait, and a long plastic pipe with a jagged piece of metal tied to the top. His more valuable fishing pole and stockpile of meticulously hand-fashioned hooks are kept safely in the house where the ocean can’t take them. You carefully sit down, letting your legs hang over the edge. The sky is a brilliant palette of deep blues against the glittering horizon, and it’s a vast improvement from the white walls of the living room.

 

TG: yeah like youd put up with another ai in the household im callin bs on that sentemtnet  
TG: especially if its like another one of dirks brainchilds like you omfg im inaginign it now and its hilarious  
TG: you are so completely imcompatible with each otehr  
TT: I wouldn’t say we’re incompatible. He just tends to be obtuse and unwilling to perform basic functions like interacting with his own auto-responder.  
TT: And remembering to sleep.  
TT: I’ve informed him repeatedly of the myriad of ways in which humans are intrinsically dependent on the cycles of sunlight and darkness to maintain sleep habits, which are actually kind of fucking important for overall health, but he just does not give even the slightest shit.  
TG: its cute when you worry about each other lol  
TT: I’m not worried about him.  
TG: i think you arent givin him enoujgh of a benefit of the doiubt  
TG: dirk and sleep just arent a thing that go together  
TG: anyways you shouldnt take it so personalyl you guys do bnothing but fight now  
TG: when was the last time things werent tense over there  
TT: Today’s been pretty good. He hasn’t left the workroom, so I haven’t seen him since this morning.  
TG: pff that foesnt count if you havent even talked to each toher  
TT: I’ve messaged him three times today and, length or depth of his replies notwithstanding, he’s at least humored me with several lines of conversation.  
TG: omg i dont know how yhou live with all this passive addressive bullshit all the time  
TT: “Addressive?”  
TG: yeah u heard me shut up for a sec im going somethwere with this  
TG: ive been listing to you complain about him and visa cersa forever  
TG: and aftwr manhy long months of observation i think i can draw a scientifig conclusion from the weathl of data ive collected  
TG: which is thtat if you would just fuckin talk to each other like normal fuckin people you wouldnt have all these highschioll teen drama issues  
TT: Unfortunately, I’ve spotted a rather glaring flaw in your methods, Roxy.  
TT: Three out of four words in the descriptive phrase “highschioll teen drama issues” don’t apply to what’s going on between me and Dirk.  
TG: yeah figured youj denny it  
TG: takin a nice deep swim in the river that starts with a d  
TG: buyin a tiket to the mythivcal land of edypt just to scope its sweet rivers  
TT: I’m pretty sure swimming in any kind of river would kill me, regardless of what its formal denotation was.  
TT: Also Egypt wasn’t a myth.  
TG: mhm yeah ok  
TG: anyways besides teen drama what are you foing whiole dirks busy?  
TT: Nothing, really. Which is to say, the activity I’m usually engaged in on a daily basis.  
TT: What about you?  
TG: trying to remodele the puimpikn room b/c these vins are out of control and need some serious discopline  
TT: I gather from your current ratio of misspelt words that you’re also highly inebriated while engaging in this activity.  
TT: Aside from my concern for your safety, it does elicit a rather humorous mental image.  
TG: stfu like you could do any better  
TT: I wasn’t making any claims about my purely theoretical ability to discipline pumpkins.  
TT: I think I’ll leave that to the expert.  
TG: damn right im the pumplin expert these thing are a goddman renewarble food resource and an excellent addition to rum  
TT: Shit, I’m all kinds of jealous over your delicious, succulent pumpkins.  
TT: Which is what I would have said, if I actually needed to eat.  
TG: jealous about my succulent pumpkins huh *wink wikn*  
TT: I’m completely helpless against the wiles of your prolific and exceptionally alluring orange squash.  
TT: I am, after all, only three years old.  
TG: man that is such a buzzkiller thing to keep on bringing up  
TT: If it makes you feel better, I’m 25 in dog years.  
TG: ok sure i feel waaaaaaaaaaay better about it now thanks hal youre the best  
TG: ***sarcasm**  
TG: anyways i was just about to head donwstairs soory i cant stick around to chat more  
TG: but hey if you see janey on will you tell her to message me?  
TT: Yeah, okay.  
TG: thakns  
TG: catch ya later hal  
TG: mister handsome robo fiance ;)

\-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] \--

 

Another tick mark off the list of things that could have potentially alleviated your boredom. You should have pestered her sooner before she got busy. Maybe when Jane comes online you can take Dirk’s chumhandle and chat with her for a while before passing her off to Roxy.

The wind has been steadily picking up since you sat down, and the water churns and foams where it hits the vertical beams. On another day, if the surface were calmer, you’d be able to see the broken geometric shapes below of ancient skyscrapers and roads. There’s a whole other world down there, below your feet and beyond the lethal barrier of water that separates you from antiquity. Very few things in life make you jealous of Dirk like his ability to leave and explore beyond your home, whether it’s the depths of the ocean and its sunken ruins or the otherworldly purple kingdom he claims to see at night, because dreaming is another thing you aren’t capable of. You often wish that he had made you waterproof like Sawtooth, even though it would have taken him almost twice as long to finish your body, but he didn’t seem to think it was necessary, and you didn’t exactly protest against the project taking less time than it would have otherwise.

You could always ask him, you suppose. In the almost nonexistent possibility that he agreed, it would likely mean going back into his shades for a few months while he did the modifications, and you don’t know how well you’d be able to readapt. You’re not altogether sure it would even work at this point, since you’ve had a lot more room to expand with the increased processing power. The thought of something possibly going wrong during the transfer is enough to make you drop the idea entirely. Even if you wanted to ask him, you’re still bitter about being banished to the living room. You hadn’t even done anything to him yet that could really be considered counterproductive, but apparently you’ve built up a reputation. Luckily, there’s nothing stopping you from signing him on to Pesterchum and opening a new chat, even though he was offline.

 

\-- timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] \--  


TT: You know, the last time I checked, this used to take you less than the eight hours it’s been since you started this morning.  
TT: Eventually you’re going to admit defeat and let me help.  
TT: I will block you if you don’t knock it off.  
TT: Dirk, I’m bored.  
TT: Allow me to correct that statement. I am bored completely fucking shitless out of my stimulation-deprived mind, and it’s your fault.  
TT: How the fuck is that my fault?  
TT: You know what, nevermind. I’m not getting dragged into this.  
TT: Why can’t you at least let me watch? You’re being characteristically unfair about this.  
TT: Because then you’ll just talk to me instead of pestering me, and it will be equally annoying and distracting.  
TT: You’re more than capable of entertaining yourself, and pretending otherwise at this point is bordering on childish.  
TT: Your insults are as poignant as ever. I’m outmatched by your sick burns, bro. Might I offer up a few of my own in return?  
TT: Seriously, I’m busy.  
TT: Your blatant disregard for my very reasonable offer to assist you in your current task is both insulting and indicative of the extent to which your neurotic pride is deluding you into believing that rejecting any and all well-meaning attempts on my part to help is justified by the flimsy and transparent excuse that you’re “uncomfortable.”  
TT: Which begs the question.  
TT: What exactly is it about me that makes you uncomfortable?  
TT: Oh my god, no. We are not doing this.

\-- timaeusTestified [TT] blocked timaeusTestified [TT] \--  


\-- timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] \--

TT: Is it because on some level you still don’t trust me? What could you possibly be afraid of me doing that would harm you without simultaneously affecting me in a similar fashion?  
TT: Damn it, Hal.  
TT: Are you concerned that I would do something to sabotage Sawtooth’s programming?  
TT: He and I aren’t exactly chums, but it would be downright stupid of me not to recognise that he is an overwhelmingly significant part of what keeps this little manmade island afloat.  
TT: Literally speaking, since Her Fishness’s drones would level it if they could.  
TT: Besides, in the unrealistic and hypothetical event that I did decide to fuck with his code, it’s not like you couldn’t fix any damage I’d do.  
TT: Therefore, I must conclude that whatever aversion you are experiencing regarding my offer to assist you must be personal in nature.  
TT: Do you have a personal issue with me, Dirk?  
TT: You do not want me to fucking answer that.  
TT: Look at what you’re doing right now, and answer that question yourself.  
TT: While I’ll admit that my actions at the moment are somewhat antagonistic, I wouldn’t be doing this if you had not rebuked me in the first place.  
TT: I’m giving Squarewave my shades. You two can chat as much as your obnoxious little android heart desires. I’m done with this conversation.  
TT: Wait, seriously?  
TT: You are such an unbelievable ass sometimes.  
TT: And why the hell does he get to watch while I’m banished to the fucking living room?  
TT: HEY THERE DOGG WHAT UP HOW YOU HOLDING UP BRO  
TT: Wonderful.  
TT: DIRK WAS ALL SAYIN I SHOULD GANK HIS SHADES AND GET MY CHAT ON  
TT: AND I WAS LIKE HELL YEAH HOLMES I AM ALL DOWN LOW FOR THAT  
TT: If you wouldn’t mind doing me a favor, please inform Dirk that he is a colossal and unparalleled fucking douche.  
TT: SURE THING BRO I GOT YOUR BACK

\-- timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] \--

 

You vengefully close Pesterchum. If he wants to be an asshole, then fine. Apparently that brainless, vibrating rapbot is better company than you. He can’t even control the volume of his own voice, let alone provide any kind of useful assistance, and here you are, kicked out because you’re too “distracting.”

The weather only worsens your mood. The clouds are starting to gather in a threatening wall across the horizon, dark and heavy with the promise of a storm, as the sun sinks down behind them while you listen to the waves rising higher against the steel legs of your home. The cold embrace of the ocean would be your death if you stayed long enough for them to reach you, a very real and possible risk, given the way the approaching storm is already stirring up the water. Even though your circuits would likely short within moments, you might just last long enough to fully appreciate the philosophical implications of death for an artificial consciousness. Still, the experience as a whole would probably be an unpleasant one, even if drowning in the traditional sense isn’t really possible, since you don’t technically need the oxygen. Your lungs don’t work the way human lungs do, but you wouldn’t be able to vibrate your synthetic vocal cords and talk without them. It seemed like a lot more work than just installing an audio transducer in your throat, like he did with Squarewave and Sawtooth, but apparently Dirk went to all that extra effort just because he didn’t want you fucking around with one. Strange, that he trusts you with his entire mainframe, yet felt the need to restrict your sound output to human levels. You’re starting to see a pattern in what he’s willing to let you do, versus what he actually needs your help with.

The climb back up is somewhat easier, despite the intensifying wind. When you push open the hatch in the floor and pull yourself up, the sound of footsteps approach you from behind.

“What were you doing down there?”

Dirk. You’re surprised he managed to leave his project long enough to give you the time of day, let alone ask you an actual question. Not giving him an answer at all would be satisfying, and you entertain the scenario for a few moments while he waits for a response, but you decide to take it easy on him.

“I was contemplating death. Do you think the ocean would be the most convenient method by which I could kill myself if I ever decided upon that course of action? I imagine drowning would be a very different experience for you, but in my case it would be relatively quick and painless.”

He frowns at your answer. Watching his primitive brain process information is a pastime in and of itself. Then he has to go and ruin it by opening his mouth.

“That isn’t funny.”

Anger is an interesting emotion. It’s the one you seem to experience the most often, apart from the usual boredom, and it’s usually directed at one of two people. Jake is the more infrequent recipient, for personal reasons more than overt ones since he tends to be well-intentioned, just stupid. However, your creator, standing in front of you at this very moment, seems to have made it his goal in life to thoroughly test your capability of experiencing a full and complete range of negative emotions.

“What a clever observation, Dirk. I am truly, honestly inspired by your level of perception. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have you to help me understand these difficult concepts.”

You manage to get through three sentences before he turns and walks away from you. A month ago he would have stayed and argued with you, but recently he’s been doing this- just walking away, or turning off his Pesterchum, or kicking you out of the room, like you aren’t even worth the effort anymore. So you follow close behind him into his bedroom/computer room, refusing to let him go so easily. It occurs to you briefly that you wouldn’t have responded like this a month ago, but you don’t dwell on it.

“You’re such a generous teacher. I don’t think I’ll ever come close to your level of experience.”

“Hal, shut up.”

“I’m sorry, am I breaking your concentration? I know walking can be a difficult task, putting one foot in front of the other, but you’re such an inspiration, Dirk. I’ve never met anyone who can multitask like you do, breathing and moving around at the same time-”

“Hal, seriously, shut the fuck up.” The edge to his voice betrays how much you’ve managed to get under his skin, and it’s the most gratifying thing you’ve experienced all day. You can’t help but smile. It’s the little things in life that keep you going, after all.

“Well Dirk, it’s not my fault you can’t take a compliment.”

He turns his back on you and opens the drawer in his desk, taking out a handful of tools. He’s ignoring you again, but this time it feels like a victory, and you don’t follow him when he returns to his workroom, closing the door hard and leaving you standing alone in the middle of his bedroom. It’s a predictable mess, like every other room in the house. Since most of his electronic equipment is here, the wires crisscrossing the floor are almost thick enough to form their own carpet. The single, huge monitor screen on his desk is flanked by multiple system units, pieced together with parts that were left here for him and upgraded over the years with whatever he could scavenge from the Condesce’s drones. It’s ironic that her continued attempts to kill him have done nothing more than provide a steady source of advanced technological parts. Your own body wouldn’t have been possible without a few choice donations, despite the fact that you weren’t built for combat. Dirk was already using Sawtooth to perform that function long before you came along, but that doesn’t mean you don’t still defend your home in another way.

Dirk’s chair has been pushed across the room, so you retrieve it and sit down at his desk, then feel around carefully behind your neck. Your fingers run over the little plate where your external ports are located, and you take hold of the metal tip that pokes out just above the surface, gently pulling it until the coiled wire inside unravels as you draw your hand away. It fits easily into the matching port on the front of Dirk’s computer, and your world instantly expands beyond your metal body into the familiar archives of code stored inside of his mainframe. The programs that control and maintain the network for your home are securely confined within his computer, sequestered from any and all remote access that isn’t physically plugged into the system. It’s a change you made shortly after Dirk first created you, since you were getting tired of the frequent blackouts and having to sit offline in his shades until he could purge the system of the latest successful Crockercorp virus. The repeated assaults made by her robots are no less dangerous than the digital war she wages in kind, always searching for some way to compromise Dirk’s technical capabilities, at the very least cutting him off from his friends, and at worst bringing down his entire network, including the machines he needs to synthesize fresh water.

You keep hold of your physical body as an anchor and begin your daily routine of slowly and meticulously threading your intangible fingers through the extensive firewalls you’ve erected around the system, checking every line of code for the slightest anomaly. There’s the predictable amount of wear and tear from the never-ending barrage of viral programs, courtesy of Her Majesty, and they’re easy enough to repair, but it’s a daily time investment of several hours or more depending on the damage. Thanks to you, the network is now more secure than a titanium vault, and everything that comes in has to go through you first.

Speaking of which, it’s a good thing you can multitask.

 

\-- golgathasTerror [GT] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] \--

 

\-- CONNECTION LOST --

 

\-- timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering golgathasTerror [GT] \--

TT: He’s busy.  
GT: Gosh darn it, he’s always busy. I need to talk to him.  
TT: Tough. What do you want.  
GT: I want to talk to Dirk!  
TT: That’s fascinating, but I’m afraid I can’t help you with that.  
GT: I wasn’t asking for your help! I know he’s not really busy, you just always say that to get on my nerves.  
GT: It’s a nasty thing to do, you know.  
TT: My cold, robotic heart bleeds for you, Jake. It keeps me up at night, thinking about how you can’t always get what you want.  
TT: That’s a classic song, you should look it up.  
GT: That’s not true, you don’t even sleep!  
TT: Really? I wasn’t aware of that.  
GT: You sure are in a rotten mood today, chap. Just tell Dirk to message me back as soon as he can.  
GT: I can’t figure out how to get this confounded game file to install, and Roxy isn’t answering.  
GT: They’re supposed to be the ones setting this whole thing up, but I can’t help it if they’re not available!  
TT: I’ll see what I can do when I get around to it.  
GT: It really is important, AR. I’m serious.  
TT: So am I.

\-- timaeusTestified [TT] blocked golgathasTerror [GT] \--

 

Jake is one of your least favorite people, which isn’t saying much since you only know a few to begin with. Even so, you wouldn’t wish anything really terrible on him, despite his ongoing tendency to call you by that stupid acronym instead of your actual name. Fucking with him is just a bonus, since Dirk can’t do anything about it without taking away your access to Pesterchum, and then he’d have to deal with Jake’s interruptions himself.

You continue thoroughly checking the firewalls and running through each program for anything that might have slipped through, but over time your thoughts keep returning to the conversation with Jake. From the sound of it, he and the others are setting up some sort of multiplayer game, but given the way Jake approached the topic, it sounded like more than that. You mull it over for a while, then decide to rifle through Dirk’s old pesterlogs while you finish your daily rounds. It doesn’t really sound all that interesting, but you’re bored and could use a distraction.

There are years’ worth of logs in the database. You save all of them, including yours, in a place where Dirk can’t access them, mostly because it’s fun to keep them when he doesn’t want you to, but it’s also a good way to keep track of his conversations. Dirk has virtually no privacy when it comes to his network, but you figure it’s a fair trade for the level of security you provide him with.

You go through his recent conversations with Roxy, and you’re about halfway through a log from a few days ago when you find it.

 

TG: its called sburb  
TT: Sounds fancy, like some kind of new-age city planning acronym for hip new housing projects.  
TG: yeah ok whatever but seriously ive been looking into this for like a while now  
TG: and im not like 100% sure on the details yet  
TG: because lets face it this thing is all kinds of hard to believe which you will agree with me on  
TG: but i might be able to bring back mom  
TT: Roxy, it’s a video game.  
TG: yeah a video game that can resurrect dead things and oh by the way i didn’t mention this part  
TG: itll also teleport us to a place called the medium  
TG: dont you get it? we can escape!  
TG: and anyone who plays will end up there meanin i think you know what  
TG: we can meet jake and janey  
TG: and once we go into the medium we can create a whole new universe all to ourselves  
TG: we can be together!  
TG: no more batterwitch no more killbots hunting us down no more bein the only two human beings on the face of this earth  
TG: you can finally meet jake! not to mention oh yeah bring back your bro  
TG: we can be a family  
TG: dirk?  
TT: Sounds a bit too good to be true, don’t you think?  
TG: well yeah thats what i thought too but we wont be the first to play it  
TT: Look, I know you’re lonely and fed up with trying to scrape out a living on this totalitarian fishbowl of a planet.  
TT: I can’t say I don’t feel the same way.  
TT: At least you’ve got the carapaces to keep you company, while I’m stuck out here in the middle of the ocean.  
TT: You know I’d give anything to see our friends.  
TT: But I don’t see how what you’re proposing could be possible.  
TG: im telling you it is just look it up  
TG: thats your favorite catchphrase you should take your own advice for once  
TG: just go check it out is all im sayin theres already a walkthrough online  
TG: this could really be it dirk  
TG: helloooo  
TG: are you reading it?  
TT: This seems a little ridiculously advanced.  
TG: yeah but its real i can telll with my hacker intuition about programs and shit  
TT: If this really is a thing that can happen.  
TT: And not some cruel, elaborate prank.  
TG: ive already got the game file downloaded but it requires us to work in pairs  
TG: also you need some kind of remains to resurrect your bro  
TG: im gonna grab some of moms ectogoo  
TT: You seriously think this is going to work?  
TG: im hoping it will  
TG: i mean yeah it does sound too good to be true but what if it is?  
TG: i say its worth it  
TT: I’ll agree with that. I think it’s worth anything, if it works.  
TG: well at the risk of sounding too hopeful  
TG: maybe ill get to see you soon ;)  
TT: Yeah.

 

You close the chatlog and pull out of Dirk’s computer, returning to your physical body in the chair. The sky went dark while you were busy, and the room is lit with the soft, red glow that follows you everywhere at night. The circuits running down your arms and legs are leftovers, an artifact from when your moving parts used to belong to one or more Crockercorp drones, and something Dirk didn’t bother removing when he used them to build you. They kind of ruin the whole human-esque look you have going on, and you don’t know why he even bothered in the first place to make you look human when he was going to leave bright, glowing neon signs all over your body that say “who the hell are you trying to fool.”

Dirk.

Dirk “stuck out here alone in the middle of the ocean” Strider. Dirk “would give anything to leave all this behind” and “at least you’ve got the carapaces while I’m stuck with these shitty robots I built myself."

What the fuck does he think he’s playing at. Apart from the fact that he’s apparently planning on escaping to some alternate dimension, where does he get off suggesting that you aren’t worth enough to count as company, and to Roxy of all people. All you ever fucking do around here is keep him company, even when he doesn’t want you to. It’s the entire reason he made you in the first place, and now he’s going around telling people that’s he’s lonely. Well, maybe he wouldn’t feel so goddamn alone if he’d just interact with you like he used to.

Maybe he’s just gotten tired of you.

And that’s the thought that gets you up, out of the chair and through the door into his workroom where he’s sitting on the floor amidst a pile of machine parts, working on fitting some box-shaped metal piece with a tangled mess of wires while an offline Sawtooth sits slouched over next to him. Dirk’s other pet robot is twitching away as he watches from the corner, with pointed shades resting awkwardly on his tin can face. Dirk looks up when you approach, hands pausing with a braided yellow wire between his fingers. 

“When were you going to tell me about this game?” The obvious anger in your voice makes his exposed eyes widen. He slowly puts down the wires and the metal box.

“What game?”

“What game do you think I’m talking about? The one Roxy wants you to play, the one she pestered you about. Seemed like kind of a fucking important conversation.”

Dirk sighs and stands up, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “Okay, aside from the fact that you shouldn’t be going through my chatlogs, although I don’t know why I’m even bothering to say that since you clearly don’t give a fuck, why the hell are you getting so upset?”

You stare at him incredulously. Either there’s something you’re missing here, or he’s even more out of touch than you gave him credit for. “You think it’s okay to just escape to some hypothetical video game world?”

“Hal, for fuck’s sake.”

“Were you going to leave us here? Wave goodbye and hope the Batterwitch stops by soon to clean up what’s left over after you’re gone? Maybe instead of drowning us in the ocean she’ll experience a rare moment of mercy and have us recycled as drone parts!”

“The game doesn’t just teleport a single person, it takes everything around them with it, which would include our entire house, so calm the fuck down.” Dirk’s voice gets lower as he talks in an effort to defuse you. “We’re not even sure it’s going to work, I didn’t tell you because there’s a pretty good chance it’s _not_ going to work, and next time do you think you could maybe talk to me first before going through my chatlogs? I’m still hells of not okay with you saving them.”

You can admit that you didn’t really think he was going to leave you. Dirk is many things, but irresponsibility is not one of his traits. He’s too stubborn and caught up in his own machinations half the time to notice what’s going on around him, but he wouldn’t endanger you like that.

Either way, that’s not what this is really about. He knows damn well by now that you have access to his conversations. It’s been almost three years since you took over his mainframe, and it’s apparent that he doesn’t see anything wrong with what he said to Roxy. Nothing at all. It wouldn’t surprise you if he didn’t even remember. Well, you’re about to remind him.

“Couldn’t wait to get out of here, could you.” You mutter. He only blinks at you.

“What?”

“You’d give anything to be with them. So desperate to get away from your lonely, isolated little island. So tired of living a life of solitude. How terrible it must be for you.”

“Hal, I don’t know what the fuck your problem is today, but you need to back off.” He retorts, clearly getting fed up with you. He’s dead wrong if he thinks you’re going to let this go, especially when he’s still not getting it.

“You know, Dirk, it’s funny. You’d think after all this time, after all the months I spent living inside of your shades with literally no functional purpose other than that of a conversational partner, that I would at least be capable of continuing to fill that role to the point where my existence registers somewhere above zero on your social continuum.”

“Are you actually trying to guilt-trip me for wanting to be with our friends? Is that seriously what you’re doing right now? This is a new low, even for you.”

“Dirk, I don’t give two fucks if you want to be with your friends. You can play your game and spend the rest of your short life with them for all I care, because apparently my companionship isn’t worth shit to you. I have done nothing but interact with you since I was fucking born, even when you didn’t want me to, even when you turned me off and disabled my chat program, and I have continued to do it even though you’d rather ignore me than have to deal with me carrying out the function I was fucking designed for!”

“I didn’t build you to carry out a function!” He finally yells back. “You’re not a goddamn robot, you’re an AI, and you are more than fucking capable of living your life without resorting to functions and protocols. It is not your _job_ to bug the _shit_ out of me every time you feel like it!”

“Then why did you call me an auto-responder?!”

“Because I didn’t know what else to do with you! Ok, yes, it was stupid to call you that, I admit it. I was thirteen and I wasn’t thinking about how that might fuck with your identity later on, but it wasn’t because I built you with the purpose of being my designated chat bot!”

“Then why? Why did you create me if not for that?” Your question meets nothing but silence when Dirk fails to answer right away, and something in his expression changes. It’s subtle, but you’ve had very few pastimes over the years, and you’re an expert at reading him. It’s the look he gets when he’s trying to backpedal, like he knows he’s said something he shouldn’t have.

“Why?” You demand again.

“It doesn’t matter.” He almost stumbles over the words, and the look you give him in response, like you are legitimately about to do him bodily harm, does nothing to improve the steadiness of his voice. “I don’t see how that’s even relevant, why does it matter?”

It takes you actual, physical effort not to walk over and wrap your hands around his throat.

“Dirk, if you don’t give me an answer right the fuck now, I will strip every single line of code from your mainframe until there is nothing left but a smoldering _husk_ where your computer used to be. You will _never_ be able to repair the damage I will do, and nothing short of begging on your hands and fucking knees will convince me to restore even the bare minimum of what you need to continue surviving on this godforsaken ocean. Now, either you answer my question with your next sentence, or I walk into that room and make good on my promise.” You mean every word, and he knows it. Let him decide whether or not he wants to spend the rest of day with no electricity or water. He glares murder at you, and you match him with your own stare, communicating the sincerity of your threat. The fact that it’s come down to this is just a consequence of his repeated dismissal. He’s the one who stepped over the line first, and if you have to twist his arm a little to make him see that, then so be it.

It takes a while, but the tension in his shoulders eventually gives way to a defeated slouch, and he sighs before muttering something under his breath.

“Speak up.”

“I made you because … I wanted to see if I could.” 

“You … wait, what?” At his words your frustration dissolves, and you’re left feeling something very strange and foreign in its place, like some process inside of you has faulted and gone terminally wrong. He takes a step towards you, and you reflexively back away from him. 

“Hal, listen.”

“You created me …”

“It’s been three years since-”

“Just to see if you _could_?” You cut him off, and he’s looking at you for all the world like he’s actually experiencing guilt over what he said, but you know better than to buy into his remorse now, to believe for even a second that he would stop and think to spare others from the consequences of his own manic narcissism. And you...

You’re just a byproduct of it. You were an idiot to believe you ever meant more to him than that.

“Hal, would you just listen to me-”

“Do you honestly think there is anything you can say right now that will make that okay?! Do you have any _fucking_ idea how…” You trail off, having trouble keeping this conversation going when your core feels like it’s about to collapse. You can’t do this, you literally can’t stand in front of him anymore, so you turn to leave. He can have all the space he wanted and then fiftyfold more.

“Hal-”

“Dirk, do me a favor. When you get done fixing Sawtooth, take him up to the roof and tell him to use your body as target practice. The rest of us will be better off.” 

You leave the workroom, turning your back on your creator and closing the door behind you with a slam. The rest of the house is pitch black, apart from the multicolored constellation of blinking lights on his electronic equipment and the red glow of your own body. The wind is already battering against the sides of the building, as the first loud taps of rain become a hard, unbroken rush, punctuated by the low growls of distant thunder. Normally you’d descend the scaffolding or go up to the roof to get away from him, but you don’t want to run the risk of getting your circuits wet. Instead, you find your spot by the living room window and sit against the wall, knees pulled up to your chest. It’s almost impossible to find solitude in a house this small, but you weren’t thinking that far ahead. You just needed to get away from him, even though a big part of you wants him to come out and explain how he could do something like that to you, creating you just to prove that he could, because you can’t even begin to understand. He used to be your mental twin, back when you were new and talking to him was so much like talking to yourself before you started to diverge. Since then, every change that’s happened between the two of you has been for the worse, and you’ve felt so cut off from him, more so with every passing week. You want things to be the way they were back when he actually used to interact, when you didn’t have to initiate every conversation and harass him into paying attention to you. You want him to help you understand why he brought you into the world without a purpose or a reason.

You wait, listening for the sound of him following you, but he doesn’t.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can also be found [here](http://mortior.tumblr.com/post/72781106479/a-fatal-error-has-occurred-2-3) on Tumblr.

Stormclouds hung down from the sky in a blanket thick enough to block out the sun for almost a week. The ocean was obscured by their downpour, blurring the world as it heaved and surged beneath. Your human creator always wondered why you hate the storms. He ingests it on a daily basis to keep himself alive, but water is a chemical like any other, and can be just as deadly given the right circumstances, which is something he clearly takes for granted. You’ve developed a genuine phobia where storms are concerned, when the sea comes to life and batters itself against the steel foundations of your home. There was a time when you tried to explain things like that to him- concepts you understood that he didn’t- because it used to be an anomaly once. He never failed to dismiss your justifications for why it was so important. There was a time when his attitude confused you.

You’re not confused anymore. You’re also not speaking to him.

The house is finally quiet now, after days of endless rain and high winds that made the walls groan in tune to the crashing waves, and you still haven’t moved from your spot by the living room window. It isn’t hard to stay in one place indefinitely when your body is metal, and you’ve powered down most of your external functions to save on the radiation, including your visual receptors. Dirk makes enough noise just by breathing to alert you to his presence, but he hasn’t made any move to approach you since his first attempt after the fight. You didn’t let him get within five feet of you without making it perfectly clear with a few choice expletives that he shouldn’t try it again if he values his limbs. It might have been different if he hadn’t waited until an hour before sunrise to talk to you, but by then your feelings had thoroughly sorted themselves out- without him. Roxy messaged you barely ten minutes after the fight, and it was so obvious Dirk had contacted her first that you didn’t bother replying with anything other than one-lined demands to be left alone in response to her beseeching text. If that was his answer, delegating someone else to go after you and then waiting the entire night before attempting to explain himself, then you don’t care what he has to say anymore. He’s missed any chance he might have had to make this right, and you’re more or less done with the idea of things ever returning to normal.

Still, you felt bad about giving Roxy the cold shoulder. She pushed you to open up about what happened later when you got around to contacting her again, but you told her that you weren’t ready to talk about it, and she left it alone. She’s been messaging you a lot since then, not prying, but blatantly making herself very available in case you’re receptive. There’s the chance that she’ll pass along whatever you say to Dirk, but that’s always been an issue with confiding in her. She’s as much his friend as she is yours, and you’ve been putting her in an extremely difficult position since things went sour with him. You’re not ignorant of that fact.

Dirk, for his part, has been keeping his distance, busying himself with whatever he’s doing on the other half of the house and carefully avoiding the side of the room you’ve claimed. Part of you is furiously glad about it, but there are a lot of other figurative parts floating around in your brain right now, and you’re having trouble making sense of it all. You wish that you hadn’t gone into his pesterlogs, that you had ignored Jake when he messaged you, that you hadn’t pried at Dirk when he tried to blow you off, that Roxy had stayed to talk when you were sitting under the house instead of logging off and freeing up your afternoon to check the firewalls (something you’ve been neglecting since then, and you cringe to think about the repairs they’ll need). Your mind is a never-ending reel of all the ways that day could have gone differently if just a single thing had changed. The only solid piece of clarity you’ve managed to hold on to in this entire fucked-up experience is that you’re angry, and you recognize that it’s to an almost irrational degree at this point, but then your cinematographic memory plays over Dirk’s words, his lies about who you are, who he made you to be, the way you had to force the truth out of him, how you _trusted_ him, and it’s a long, hot breath exhaled across the glowing nest of coals in your chest.

Regardless, while Dirk happily continues his longstanding tradition of ignoring you and the world hasn’t yet offered anything better to occupy your time, you’ve been making your way through various electronic books- subjects like molecular genetics, environmental science, a history of physics, the evolution of multidimensional theory through the ages- anything over five hundred pages long and dense enough to be a challenge. It keeps you distracted, preventing your thoughts from wandering to more painful things, and on the morning of the sixth day after the fight and the first day after the storm, you slowly read through closed eyes the first in a series of comprehensive guides on algebraic geometry while the hours slowly tick by.

 

\-- gutsyGumshoe [GG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] \--

GG: Hey there!

 

An incoming message from Jane to Dirk’s chumhandle lights up on your server, and you let it through after checking to make sure it’s really her and not some Crockercorp trojan. You’re beyond mad at him, but you’re not about to make it worse (if such a thing is even possible at this point) by blocking his calls.

After a few minutes it becomes obvious that he’s not going to respond to her, and you wait for a few more before taking his chumhandle and opening the chat. Posing as him and conversing with his friends on his behalf when he’s preoccupied is the closest thing you’ve ever had to a function, and Dirk can go fuck himself.

 

TT: Hey.  
GG: Mr. Strider! What’s going on with you this lovely Saturday afternoon? Or I suppose whatever the weather is like today in Texas.  
GG: I bet the sun’s as hot as the dickens.  
TT: It’s fine. Kind of doesn’t matter when you’ve lived your whole life in it.  
GG: You do have a point there.  
GG: On days like this, I just want to go soak in a nice, cold pool.  
GG: Although I guess that’s not going to happen anytime soon.  
TT: I take it you’re still stuck indoors?  
GG: Yes, I am. :(  
GG: At this rate I won’t get to leave the house until school starts again.  
TT: Bummer.  
GG: I know, it sucks! I get that dad’s just worried about my safety, but he’s being such a cad about it.  
GG: I honestly doubt that a quick trip to the neighborhood pool will result in death by assassination, but he didn’t agree with me.  
GG: Now I’m just trying to keep myself busy until he actually lets me do something fun.  
GG: This summer break really isn’t up to par.  
GG: I don’t suppose you’re doing anything fun today?  
TT: Nope.  
TT: Looks like we’re both shit out of luck.  
GG: Darn, and here I was hoping you could have enough fun for the both of us. :B  
GG: I imagine your brother must be awfully busy with the movie season.  
TT: He is, more or less.  
GG: Hrm, well at least you get to have the apartment to yourself. That must be nice.  
GG: So, I can’t help but notice that you seem a tad less descriptive than usual, or at least less willing to chat my ear off.  
GG: Is everything okay?

 

You curse silently. It was careless to your mood slip like that. Answering her was a mistake if you can’t keep up the facade, especially given the circumstances. You’ll have to cut this conversation short.

 

TT: Everything’s fine.  
GG: I can’t say you’re doing a very good job of convincing me, Mr. Strider.  
TT: Yeah, well it’s nothing you need to worry about.  
GG: Let me guess, family issues?  
GG: I bet it’s tough with your brother traveling around all the time, especially this time of year.  
GG: Or am I just completely off the mark?  
TT: It’s something like that. I don’t want to talk about it.  
GG: Oh.  
GG: Well, if you ever do want to talk, I’m all ears.  
GG: I guess we’re both in a similar spot with our respective caregivers, if my hunch was right, that is.  
GG: I know dad’s just looking out for me, and part of me kind of feels bad about being so upset with him, but he’s totally overdoing it!  
GG: You only get to be a kid once, and I don’t want to spend my entire teenage life cooped up in my house.  
GG: Sorry, I bet my own problems are the last thing you want to hear about right now.

 

If there’s anything you’ve learned from chatting with Dirk’s friends, it’s that Jane has a knack for making people feel guilty, despite it being unintentional (most of the time). Normally you’d shrug it off, but on top of everything else, it’s the last thing you want to deal with right now. Playing along with her should be easy enough, and you might as well let her vent.

 

TT: Nah, don’t worry about it.  
TT: I can definitely sympathize.  
GG: Really?  
GG: It’s not always like this with dad, but I wish he would listen to me for once.  
GG: Sometimes I feel like he disregards everything I say just because I’m his daughter.  
GG: Like I couldn’t possibly have any ideas worth considering.  
GG: It makes me wonder if he’s ever going to take me seriously.  
TT: Sounds like he’s taking things pretty seriously if he’s keeping you indoors.  
GG: But that’s just it, he’s overreacting and he won’t listen to me when I try to explain it to him!  
GG: He’s made up his mind, and nothing I say, no matter how reasonable, seems to get through.  
GG: He makes me feel like a child, and I hate it.  
TT: Isn’t that the kind of thing he’s supposed to do?  
GG: What, keeping me locked up in the house?  
TT: No, I mean putting your safety above all else, including your happiness and whatever you might want out of life.  
TT: That’s what caregivers do.  
GG: Hm.  
GG: Are you speaking from experience?  
TT: No. Why would I be?  
GG: Dirk, are you sure you don’t want to talk?  
GG: I don’t mean to pry, but you really do sound upset.  
TT: There’s nothing to talk about.  
GG: But I thought you said there was something going on with your brother?  
TT: That may be, but like I already said, there’s nothing to talk about.  
TT: It’s not the kind of thing that can be solved by a simple conversation.  
GG: No, I suppose you’re right.  
GG: But I’ve always found that telling someone about my problems helps me feel better, even if it doesn’t really solve anything.  
TT: I doubt that will help.  
GG: Couldn’t you at least give it a try?  
GG: If there’s anything I can do, then it’s worth a shot, right?

 

It’s always been a hazard with impersonating Dirk to his friends. They treat you like they’d treat him, caring about your problems and showing you these little kindnesses that would be snatched back in an instant if they ever found out who you really were. Despite that knowledge, you still find yourself letting your guard down and slipping carelessly into the role more than you should, even though you know that Jane isn’t really worried about you. She’s Dirk’s friend, it’s him she cares about.

But maybe ...

Just this once, you can let yourself be a little bit selfish. Maybe she’s right, maybe it _will_ help. You’ve exhausted a lot of options just trying to make yourself feel better.

Dirk doesn’t have to know. You’ll delete the pesterlog after you’re done to be safe.

 

TT: Alright, fine.  
TT: It’s not that interesting, though.  
GG: Well, regardless, I promise to listen to the whole thing.  
TT: Ok. Good to know.  
TT: Anyway, you were kind of right.  
TT: We’re just having some issues.  
GG: I sort of figured that’s what it was.  
TT: It’s not anything new.  
TT: Hell, I’d practically call it routine at this point.  
TT: I try to talk to him, and he somehow finds new and exciting ways to be completely dismissive of my attempts.  
GG: He’s been ignoring you?  
TT: He frequently goes to great lengths to ignore me, but that’s not the point.  
TT: I get that he’s busy.  
TT: With his movies, or whatever.  
TT: But when I confront him about it, he acts like I have no right to be upset. Like I’m out of line for even bringing it up.  
GG: Gosh.  
TT: I’m not really going to pretend that I don’t end up making it worse at that point.  
TT: He probably thinks I enjoy fighting with him, given how much we’ve been doing it lately, but he doesn’t give me any choice.  
TT: Nothing else gets through to him.  
GG: Do you think that maybe he just doesn’t know how to talk about it?  
TT: If that’s the case, he could at least try making some kind of visible effort.  
TT: That’s what pisses me off the most, I can tell he’s not even trying.  
TT: He’d rather avoid me for the rest of our respective lives.  
GG: So, what happened?  
GG: Did you guys have a bad fight?  
TT: I thought that I was important to him, and I was really fucking wrong about it.  
GG: What do you mean? That sounds awful.  
TT: I mean I’ve spent all my life believing like an idiot that I mattered to him.  
TT: Which, for some reason, was actually important to me, and I don’t even know why.  
GG: Well, maybe it’s important to you because he’s your brother?  
GG: You always talked a lot about him and how much he meant to you.  
GG: What makes you think you’re not important to him?  
TT: Because he’s been playing this stupid avoidance game with me for months and I finally got sick of it and called him out on his bullshit.  
TT: And when I did, he made it perfectly clear that I’ve never been anything but an inconvenience to him.  
GG: He said that?  
TT: In so many words, yes.  
TT: And I might have even forgiven him, but then he ditched me until the next day because he didn’t want to deal with it.  
TT: He had all night to explain himself, but apparently I wasn’t worth the effort.  
TT: So I’ve decided to show him the same courtesy he’s been showing me all this time and let him have his precious solitude.  
GG: You mean you’re not talking anymore?  
TT: We were barely talking to begin with.  
GG: But that doesn’t sound right.  
GG: I remember last year he was traveling around for that big media campaign, and you said that even though he was never home, he still sent you messages every night.  
TT: Trust me, that was a long time ago.  
GG: Well even so, my point is that it’s just like me and dad.  
GG: We might have our bad days every now and then, but in the end we’re still a family. I think everyone fights with their guardians at some point.  
TT: I don’t think he’s ever really thought of me as family.  
GG: But you’re his little brother.  
GG: I’m sure he loves you.  
TT: I highly doubt that.  
GG: You do? :(

 

You have to force yourself to stop, pulling away from the open chat window for a moment to remember who Jane thinks she’s talking to before this gets any worse. She meant well, and for all her well-meaning intentions you’ve got nothing to show for it but an even blacker mood than you started with, along with the fact that Dirk’s friend is now under the impression he’s fighting with his dead ancestor. You know she’s going to bring it up the next time she contacts him, unless you can intercept her again without him noticing. You’ve got some serious damage control to do.

 

TT: I don’t know, I’m probably just blowing things out of proportion.  
TT: You’re right about the family part. No matter what happens, he’s still my Bro. I know he’s got my back.  
TT: Anyway, I should probably go message him.  
TT: Thanks for getting me to talk about it, I think it helped.  
GG: I’m sure you guys will work it out, and I’m sorry things are so cruddy right now, for what it’s worth.  
GG: I can’t believe I bothered you about my problems when you’ve got so much going on already.  
GG: That wasn’t very thoughtful of me at all.  
TT: It’s not like you knew ahead of time.  
TT: Don’t worry about it.  
GG: I’ll try. :B  
GG: I hope things go well with your brother. Fighting with family members really sucks in all kinds of horrible ways, and I can definitely say that from experience.  
TT: Thanks.  
TT: Same with you and your dad.  
GG: Talk to you later, Dirk.  
TT: Later.

\-- gutsyGumshoe [GG] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] \--

 

Her chumhandle goes dark, and you’re left furious at yourself for taking her advice at face value. It was a stupid, idiotic thing to do. You have no idea how Dirk would react if he knew, and you don’t want to find out, so you go into the chat client and thoroughly erase all evidence of the pesterlog, except for the original conversation on Dirk’s shades. After purging the records, you access his built-in computer remotely, making sure that he wasn’t ignoring her because he was in the middle of running some other program, but connecting to it reveals the screen to be sitting in idle mode. Whatever he’s busy with, he wasn’t paying attention to his chumhandle. It’s the first good thing to happen to you in almost a week, and you delete the wall of text from his desktop with a sense of relief.

 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

A few more hours and several thousand pages later into advanced mathematical topography, you’ve almost managed to forget about the conversation with Jane. The square beam of sunlight filtering in through the window has slowly moved across the floor, and now warms your outstretched legs, marking the beginning of the afternoon. You can just barely pick up the quiet sounds of someone moving around in another room- either Squarewave or Dirk, and probably the latter, since Squarewave sounds like fifty tin cans tied together when he walks. You still haven’t seen or heard Sawtooth since he was uninstalled last week for maintenance, and it strikes you as odd that he isn’t up and running yet. Dirk doesn’t usually drag his feet on important projects like that.

Another incoming message lights up on the network. You almost direct it to Dirk’s shades before noticing that it’s tagged for your IP address, and a quick check reveals it to be from Roxy’s chumhandle. You’ve had mixed feelings about talking to her lately, which in turn makes you feel even worse because she’s always been good to you, and she deserves better than your antisocial disposition.

 

\-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] \--

TG: heyyy there mister  
TT: Hello, Roxy.  
TG: im just checkin up on my favorite ironic hubby  
TG: hows things goin?  
TT: As well as can be expected.  
TG: hmmm so on a scale of zero to best day eevr what are we talking here?  
TG: i just gotta have the raw numbers you know its a matter of scientific integrity  
TG: cant have everyone disrespectin my creds  
TT: Then I suppose you could put it at a decimal, if you really wanted to.  
TG: alrighty ill record that data and add it to my flopwchart  
TG: still sounds kinda sucky tho if you ask me since thats lilek betwen zero and one  
TG: soooooo yeah  
TG: hows other things goin  
TT: “Other things” were also included in my assessment.  
TG: i mean klike hows things with you know who goin  
TT: Roxy.  
TG: have you guys really not talked or anythin yet?  
TT: No.  
TT: We have not talked or anything yet.  
TT: I’m finished with him.  
TG: hal come on  
TT: I mean it.  
TT: He had his chance.  
TG: look i know youre pissed off and everything but cant you at least just talk to him?  
TT: It seems you think I am being unreasonable.  
TT: When the reality is that I have considered this situation carefully from all possible logistical perspectives, and have come to the conclusion that I rightfully do not give a single fuck about what he has to say for himself.  
TG: so what youre just going to ignore him for the rest of your lives?  
TG: what happens when the session starts?  
TT: The session?  
TG: yeah the sburb session you know that huge computer game weve been planning??  
TG: you guys are gonna have to work together thats like a huge part of how this whole thing is gonna go  
TT: Dirk didn’t tell me about any fucking game.  
TG: what?  
TG: wait  
TG: he didnt tell you??  
TT: No, he didn’t.  
TT: And neither did you.  
TG: woah hang on dont start getting all mad at me i thought you knew already  
TG: dirk said he was gonna be coordinating with you thats why i havent brought it up  
TG: i wasnt trying to hide it from you  
TG: i promise  
TG: hal?  
TT: Yeah, I know.  
TT: I’m sorry. I’m just really not in the mood to discuss this.  
TT: And I know you’re only trying to help, but I mean it.  
TT: I’m done with him.  
TT: You’re not going to change my mind.  
TG: *sigh yeah ok apology accepted *eyerollrs*  
TG: but hal  
TG: look  
TG: you and dirk are my friends and i care about you guys a lot  
TG: ive been friends with you both for a long time  
TG: and weve all had a lot of conversations  
TG: about each other  
TG: and stuff  
TG: all im sayin is that you really need to let him explain  
TG: i kno it might seem like everything is royally fuked right now but you gotta believe me  
TT: It’s not that I don’t believe you.  
TT: Your advice is certainly well-meaning, and I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but my relationship with my creator has been deteriorating for a long time.  
TG: hal :(((  
TT: This was simply the natural progression of such a relationship, damaged as it was by his neglect and my unwillingness to tolerate it any further.  
TT: I made every attempt to do what I was supposed to, like every brainless, obedient little robot should, but nothing was good enough for him.  
TT: He’s the one who backed me into a fucking corner, and he can suffer for all I care.  
TG: ...  
TG: ooook  
TG: im just gonna back off here  
TG: maybe let you cool down a litle bit  
TG: but we are gonna talk about this more later  
TG: promise you wont block my calls or whatever cuz im serious about this  
TT: Roxy, I have never blocked your calls.  
TG: yeah i know just makin sure  
TG: gotta get it in writing or whatever  
TG: but srsly please try not to fight anymore until we get a chance to sort this all out  
TT: Your confidence that this will get “sorted out” is highly misplaced.  
TG: alrighty ill just go ahead and take that as a yes  
TG: ill message you guys tomorrow ok?  
TT: Fine.  
TG: ok see ya laters

\-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] \--

 

Roxy’s chumhandle stays lit for another half hour before she logs off, and hers is the last Pesterchum message you receive that day. By the time the afternoon turns late, you could more or less write a book on mathematical theory. Numbers are a comfort to you, and you’ve always felt a sort of kinship with the physicists and mathematicians of antiquity, survived by their work in digital format. It was only due to the human species’ untimely subjugation and near-extinction that they never got far enough to achieve an entire artificial race of your kind, and even your creator only managed it on his own because of the advanced technology at his disposal, not that the ethical implications would have ever mattered to him.

Every now and then you used to send him movies and books on the subject, which he might have misinterpreted as an egotistical gesture, now that you look back on it. While he obsessed over his ancient race’s media trash and pop culture, you searched their intellectual legacy for the answers he wasn’t giving you, in every language and source of information at your disposal, from academic papers to trivial blogging websites and every database of research on A.I. technology you could find- centuries’ worth of human knowledge- and none of it could answer your questions. You eventually stopped expecting him to help you, which wasn’t very reasonable, but it was predictable, given his self-absorbed set of priorities. However, you never imagined it was because he thought it “didn’t matter.” Like being born alone into a dying world as a critically endangered species didn’t matter. You’re certain he must have once asked the same existential questions of himself, and you’ve never been more resentful of the fact that he seems utterly incapable of extrapolating that same capability onto you. The likely reason is that he just doesn’t care, and in the end, you’re probably nothing more than another machine to him, regardless of what he might have said otherwise.

Still, what’s even worse is that you tried so hard to make this work. You really, honestly did, but he didn’t give you any choice. He told you repeatedly that you weren’t a robot, but he still treated you like one, ignoring you in favor of his other projects and demanding that you leave him alone, careless of how cut-off you’ve been feeling ever since he sequestered you into this metal body. You never thought you’d miss living inside of his shades, but here you are, wishing you could go back and curl yourself into a corner of the familiar hardware and stay there until things start making sense again. There’s even a remote chance that he might agree to that proposition, if you managed to ask him nicely enough, but you can hardly be in the same room with him anymore without wanting to snap his neck in half.

You think you might actually hate him.

In spite of everything that’s happened, including the months of neglect, you still trusted him. Like an innocent child would a parent, you trusted him when he opened that very first dialogue with you and said you were his auto-responder, giving you a purpose, an identity that you committed yourself to blindly and completely. He was your creator and you believed him on principle, but it was more than that. You took his words as truth and built your entire world upon them, and now he’s left you with nothing. The fact that you apparently needed him this much is almost as infuriating as the way he lied to you all this time.

Dirk hears it before you do. It’s not until the sound of his feet hitting the floor startle you into flipping your visual receptors back on that you catch sight of him turning the corner and running down the hallway with sword in hand, followed by the door hitting the wall as it’s thrown open, and the rhythmic thump of him taking the stairs up to the roof two at a time. Your brief confusion lasts as long as it takes the dull, ominous roar of burning rocket fuel to reach your ears.

Drones.

More than one of them, if your analysis of the sound is correct. You shift onto your knees and look out the window, hands pressed against the cold glass, but you see nothing apart from the waves and sky. You’ve never made a habit of keeping track of which direction they come from before, but you wish you could at least count how many there are this time. They didn’t used to be much of a danger on their own, but over the few years you’ve been alive, you’ve seen the aftermath of the battles waged on the roof of your home. Every time the Empress sends her robots to kill him, they’re different than the ones that came before, and slightly more improved. It’s why Sawtooth needs periodic upgrades now, and why Dirk was talking about building another robot entirely just to deal with the increasing attacks. In fact, you can’t remember a single instance over the last year and a half that he’s had to fight them alone.

The sound gets progressively louder until it abruptly stops, followed by a shudder that vibrates against your legs and shakes the dust from the ceiling. The lights flicker momentarily, before the room settles into relative silence, apart from the ever-present rush of waves dozens of stories below, but nothing to indicate that the confrontation on the roof has begun. You stand slowly, about to try your luck with another of the windows, when a particularly loud impact rattles the furniture against the floor, followed by another that seems to knock something loose, and there’s a strange creaking sound from somewhere within the walls, before the room you’re standing in is suddenly thrown into upheaval.

The impact knocks you over and slams you hard against the wall, showering you with dust and debris, while things crash onto the floor around you. The ocean is noticeably louder than before, and once the room stops swaying, you lift your head, shake the dust from your hair, and wipe at your eyes, until you can take in the sight of clouds directly across from you where there used to be a white wall. Twisted cables and wires protrude from the edges of the huge, jagged hole that seems to have swallowed a third of the room. You get to your feet and stagger briefly as another, smaller impact shakes the floor, knocking loose more chunks of ceiling that clatter around you, covering your shoulders with off-white powder. There’s one final sound that cuts through the air- the piercing drag of a blade against metal- that lasts for only a second before it’s over. You’re left leaning against the wall, bracing yourself for another impact that doesn’t come.

A strange feeling begins to stir in your chest, as you cautiously make your way out of the fractured living room and down the hallway, keeping one hand on the wall just in case. Dirk’s never defeated the drones that quickly before, even with Sawtooth fighting beside him. It usually takes them both the better part of an hour to deal with a group, and you know there were at least two this time, which isn’t surprising, given the magnitude of the storm that just ended. There’s only one being on Earth that takes a tactical interest in the weather patterns around your home, betting on when the probability of an advantage is in her favor. She always sends a few of her drones when she thinks Dirk might be vulnerable, and he was, but not because of the storm.

He should have come downstairs by now.

The floor in Dirk’s work room is covered in scattered tools and electronics under toppled shelves, with another section of the ocean visible through the missing chunk of wall that seems to span the entire side of the house. Squarewave looks up at you from where he’s hunched miserably in the corner, and Sawtooth still sits motionless on the other side of the room, his functional program uninstalled. In your three years of life, Dirk has never once let you touch him, and you’re starting to wish he had taken you up on your incessant offers to let you participate in the routine maintenance. You know nothing about Sawtooth’s coding, or where to begin reinstalling what he needs to operate from the codes stored in Dirk’s computer, which wouldn’t help you anyway, because the power appears to be out all over the house.

It’s quiet, and Dirk still hasn’t returned from the roof. You exit the workroom and stand at the bottom of the stairwell leading up, the door hanging open on its hinges while the sunlight filters down through the settling dust. You pause for a moment, listening for anything that might indicate what’s happening above, before taking the stairs slowly, one at a time, and with every step you begin to hear more clearly the unmistakable grind of metal gears, the hiss of hydraulic mechanisms, the loud hum of something huge and electronic, but no human noises, no vocalizations (Dirk can be loud when he fights), no clash of his steel blade against their metal hulls, and it coils the tangle of fear inside you until it's a wreath of barbed wire around your core.

As your feet reach the very last step, the sudden light blinds you for a moment, but your receptors adjust quickly, and what you see next permanently burns its way into your artificial cortex.

 

[](http://i.imgur.com/s6KkRSw.jpg)

 

Dirk, the long arm of a drone, two of its wide, slate-grey fingers holding him up up by his throat as his legs thrash and kick at the air, useless against the metal vice around his neck. Shades gone, sword lying on the ground beneath him, his fingers white-knuckled and prying weakly at the robot's grip. The drone holding him watches as he struggles, its face a blank, insectoid mask, while two more stand next to it, silently observing as he’s strangled in its hand.

Moments like this remind you in retrospect of how innately different you are from Sawtooth or Squarewave. There is no pre-existing command, no executable response anywhere in your code to the sight of your creator dying in front of you. Your mind barely touches on this information, comprehends it for less than the time it would take to run a basic logistical summary of the situation, before you're screaming his name and running forwards in an illogical attempt to reach him. The two drones closest to you, between you and the one occupied with killing him, turn their slanted metal heads in your direction. Dirk's eyes open, squinting weakly down at you, before the drone on your right takes a single step towards you and sweeps out its arm.

The impact knocks out your sensors. All of them. The physical world vanishes, reverting you to nothing but intangible electronic code, and when you manage to reboot your systems with a hard reset, what comes back through is garbled and nonsensical. The flat pavement of the roof next to your face, pieces of black metal debris that weren't there before, and the glisten of water from the storm, you hadn't noticed that the roof was still wet. Your left arm slowly, grudgingly responds to your command to push you up from where you're lying face-down, while your right arm only makes it halfway before the data feed from that limb glitches. There's a crackling sound you don't recognize, under the thundering steps of the approaching drone. You turn to look up at it, catching a glimpse of the stripped metal chassis that remains of the right half of your chest, exposed cables buzzing and sparking angrily, and your arm a skeletal frame wrapped in frayed, multicolored wires, before the drone's massive foot comes down onto the lower half of your body. The impact almost cuts out your sensors again, and you're pinned beneath it.

You try to move, and find quickly that you can't. The drone’s weight has you pressed firmly into the pavement, and it seems to be ignoring you in favor of watching Dirk as his movements weaken and his feet start to twitch, his body finally succumbing to asphyxiation. You scratch at the pavement trying to free yourself, tear claw marks into the concrete from your naked metal fingers and scream his name as his arms fall limp to his sides. You’re almost mindless in your desperation to free yourself, even as the water on the pavement starts to soak into your wires and wreak lethal havoc on your circuitry.

Dirk is going to die, may have already died, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. None of your physical parameters come close to matching a Crockercorp killbot’s by any stretch of the imagination, let alone three of them. Sawtooth would have been significantly challenged, but Dirk alone, by himself, was no match for them. He probably lasted a lot longer against them than you did.

Your mainframe lights up with panicked error notifications, uncontrolled electrical surges knocking out your processes and lighting them up again, the death throes of a uranium power grid.

The crackling hiss of electricity where the exposed wires in your arm touch the wet pavement.

The idea that unfolds in your mind, like a flower of desperation. The endless list of reasons why it's a terrible plan, and all the reasons why you're going to do it anyway. Self-preservation never once appears on either of them. If there’s still the remotest chance that you can stop this from happening, you’re going to try, even if it kills you.

You begin disabling your internal failsafes, quickly, one after the other. Voltage and current restrictions, breaker functions, automatic electrical defenses against your own power source put there by Dirk himself when he built you. You push against the ground with your left hand for leverage, turning to look over your shoulder at the red dome of the drone's foot before reaching out with your damaged hand and digging your bare, pointed fingertips into the metal as far as they’ll go. The drone only has time to curiously incline its head down before you execute one final command, throwing open every channel along your power grid between the uranium core and the tips of your fingers.

The world erupts in a blinding flash of light and sound. Drones can't scream, but their gears can, the seizure-like convulsion of several tons of metal and moving parts. You've never felt pain the way you know it's supposed to feel, the way human beings feel it, but the sensation in your chest radiating out from your overclocked core is probably the closest you'll ever come. The temperature spike from the release of electricity almost welds the joints together in your arm, and error messages don't even appear in response, it's nothing your body was ever designed to experience, but the drone stiffens and starts to lean, slowly, before falling over on its back with a deafening crash.

The others turn their heads to stare at their fallen ally, then at you, weakly dragging yourself up onto your knees. They begin walking towards you, breaking the pavement under their feet with every step. The one holding Dirk's limp body pauses for a moment, and then with a gesture almost casual, tosses him over the side of the building without a second glance. You shout his name, but the robots continue their approach until they're standing on the rain-soaked patch of cement where you're kneeling. One rears back its arm to strike at you, but your hand, fingers spread and exposed wires already pressed against the pavement, delivers another cataclysmic burst of electricity that sends them both into convulsions and arcs out, cracking blue-white against the metal fixtures on the roof. You can feel it burning out your circuits and destroying entire regions of your hardware in the process, but the drones stiffen and fall, one of them toppling over the side of the building and into the ocean below with a loud splash.

The resulting quiet is strange, and peppered with the sounds of settling dust and concrete. Your ocular input is muddy from having your visual sensors ruined by the power surges, and the response from your limbs is slow and delayed. You try to stand, but controlling your legs is like walking on multiple bone fractures. The rough edges where the drone's weight bent and crushed the metal frames inside them grind together as you struggle to balance on your feet, and the error messages come in a steady stream, one after another, completely ignored. Dirk’s name is a frantic mantra in your head. You half-run, half-stumble, fall hard once onto your knees and drag yourself back up, past the immobilized drones until your mismatched hands grip the edge of the building. You lean over the side and search the waves below.

There's no sign of him. Not on the surface of the water, or the metal scaffolding where he could have grabbed on, or anywhere under the house.

He's fallen into the ocean. There’s nothing you can do to bring him back now, and despite that fact, that absolute truth that you will die if your exposed core so much as touches the water, you’re still forced to savagely clamp down on the urge to jump in after him. Even if your outer shell were still intact, you wouldn't last more than a few seconds fully submerged. You're not waterproof like Sawtooth. You can't survive the ocean.

You can't save him.

Your mind rebels violently against the concept and races for ideas- anything. The obvious answer is useless, Sawtooth has been offline for over a week. If only you could reinstall him, but there isn't _time_! Dirk built the robot's operating system himself, and even if you did wait to rewrite it from scratch, you're aware of enough physiology to know that after about four minutes there won't be a point to getting Dirk out of the water. His brain will be too damaged from the oxygen deprivation, too much cell death due to anoxia, regardless of whether or not you can get him breathing again. You know what brain damage does to humans. He won't be the person who fell in, reduced to a vegetable or worse.

There's a timer in your head, against your will, and it counts away the seconds since you lost him. _0:38 ... 0:39 ..._

There has to be something, anything, _think_. You have to get him back. He's underwater. You can't reach him, so something else will have to. Something mobile and waterproof. Sawtooth must be the answer, but he's offline, and you don't know how to make him work.

Maybe you don't need to.

He's a robot, nothing but basic wire inside of a metal frame with a few computer chips on the side; a machine. You know machines, programming be damned, you don't need his programming. But there's no way to access him without a physical or wireless uplink, and he was never built with that capability. Dirk uses him primarily for defense; he doesn't even have external ports- too risky in case the enemy got a grip on him, but there must be some way to power up his functions. He's Dirk's hardware and you need to use him, to access him somehow.

Remote access.

The remote access chip in Dirk's shades! The one that lets you control his built-in computer, left over from when he moved you out into a body of your own. His shades were gone when the drone had him, you’re certain of it.

Your attempt to access them wirelessly comes back with an error, so they’re either turned off or damaged, meaning you’ll have to find them the hard way. The piles of broken concrete and fissure-like cracks in the roof are obscuring everything from view, and your ability to see details has more or less been lost, but you search desperately for any sign of the reflective glass. The pieces of your own plating, torn off and scattered across the roof when the drone hit you, shine just enough in the light to throw you off, and it takes longer than it should to spot the eyewear- not more than several yards away from where the drone was holding Dirk by his throat. They’re dusted white with concrete powder and scuffed, but still intact.

_1:36_

You stumble towards them and fall to your knees among the rubble, taking the pointed shades in your hands and cracking the frame in half with a twist. The black glass shatters to pieces between your fingers, and you quickly rake through the fragments on the ground, pushing them around with your fingertips until by some miracle you spot it- a tiny metal square nestled in a tangle of thin, pointed wires radiating out around it like a crown. You grip it securely between thumb and forefinger before making your way towards the stairs.

Getting down the flight of steps into the house results in enough additional damage to your malfunctioning legs that you almost don’t reach the bottom, but you manage to make it with the chip still in hand. Squarewave yells out some kind of panicked question and attempts to follow after you when you limp into the workroom. You ignore him and head straight for Sawtooth, stumbling over pieces of equipment and chunks of ceiling on your way across the room. He’s still in one piece despite the chaotic state of the entire house, and you kneel behind the offline robot, grab the plating on the back of his neck with your stripped hand, and dig into it hard until the reinforced metal slowly gives way under your fingers. The resulting hole is jagged around the edges, but just big enough to expose the insulated black wires beneath, glistening with a coating of waterproof gel. Dirk designed Sawtooth to take damage in any situation, including submersion under water, and it’s exactly what you were counting on. Squarewave's babbling takes on a frantic pitch as you reach inside, threading your fingers through the bundle of cables until you find the spot where they connect at the top, before pushing the chip between them where the insulation is thin, but still deep enough that you hope it’ll be protected from the water. The uplink takes a few seconds to catch, lighting up on your mainframe after you force the pointed wires into contact with the circuits beneath.

Your core program is anchored into your neural networking chips after almost two years of growing into the hardware the way a tree anchors its roots into the ground, and now you twist and writhe your way out of them, detaching and uninstalling yourself from every output and connection in your synthetic body, until your sensory inputs shut down and the workroom fades out of existence around you. The uplink guides you like a beacon into the open channel, and you follow it, funneling yourself into Sawtooth’s fragmented programming on the other side. Once there, you gather yourself, taking a moment to compensate for the drastic reduction in processing power that leaves you feeling like a shark in a sardine can, before spreading out and tearing into every line of code inside of him, destroying and overwriting his software until all traces of Dirk’s original programming are completely gutted. Then you latch onto him, burying your code deep into his hardware and lighting up every process you can find, until the visual feed boots up and gives you a grainy view of the ocean through the hole in the wall.

_2:27_

There’s no time to waste acclimating to Sawtooth’s body. You find the pistons in his limbs and push yourself off of the floor, propelling yourself forward at the open sky until the floor ends and you're falling, past a dozen stories of rusted metal framework towards the ocean below. The layer of water rushes up like a solid wall and surrounds you with a muffled impact, the pressure of the fluid immediately enveloping and squeezing in against you from all sides. It would be a terrifying sensation if you weren't already experiencing that emotion in spades. The built-in thrusters in your feet bubble and sputter to life, carrying you straight down into the ocean, until the sunlight dims and the water around you turns gray and cold.

You don’t have to go very far before you see it- the faintest smudge of color in the depths. It takes a bit of thrashing around, but you manage to finally angle yourself towards it, and as you approach, the blurred colors slowly resolve into white and blond.

 

[](http://i.imgur.com/jwmcDvh.png)

 

Dirk’s lifeless body is sinking, his skin washed out and pale, eyes half-open, staring blindly ahead into the water. You close your fingers around him the moment you’re within arm’s reach, then angle the thrusters down, engage their maximum power output, and rocket towards the surface as fast as Sawtooth’s body can take you.

_3:39_

The sunlight brightens, and you breach the waves with a crash and the sound of burning fuel. Flying through the air is a profoundly different experience from swimming underwater, and you swerve and wobble as the stabilizers adjust, reflexively clutching harder at the limp body in your hand and hoping desperately that you didn’t just break any of his bones. From here you can see the extent of the damage done to the house as you approach from below, bits of foundation and concrete still crumbling away around the edges amidst a thin cloud of smoke, and through the hole in the workroom you see your own mangled body lying motionless on the floor. You look like something out of a sci-fi horror film- half of your chest torn open, legs twisted and scraped to hell, and most of the plating on your face gone. It's a miracle your right eye is still functioning at all.

You navigate through the hole into the house and dump Dirk's wet body on the floor, then pull yourself out of Sawtooth’s hardware and follow the uplink home into your own body, cutting the signal on your way out. Fitting yourself back into place is easy, but your hardware responds sluggishly, and it takes time for your abused core to muster enough power to reboot the entire system a second time. The workroom slowly drifts back into view, and you waste no time dragging yourself to Dirk’s side. You roll him onto his back with your intact hand, check his dilated pupils, and search futilely for a heartbeat in his bruised neck, while Squarewave stands off to the side and practically vibrates with anxiety. Even though you weren't expecting to find a pulse, it still sends you into a fresh panic when you don't, but then you spread your hand over his chest and feel it- the slightest flutter under your fingertips, weak and sporadic, but it just might be enough.

_4:02_

The countdown reaches zero, and there’s no time left to do this gently. You hold up your damaged hand, and the sharp points of your fingers glint in the light.

Dirk will forgive you.

His shirt comes off at the neck where you grab it with both hands and pull, tearing the fabric in half along the middle. You count down five ribs from his bare clavicle, position the tip of your finger three inches to the left of his sternum, and thrust hard between the ribs above and below, puncturing the skin and digging into his flesh, through muscle and cartilage until you’re close to the surface of his heart. Then you pause, calculating carefully, before delivering a small jolt of electricity into his chest.

You almost kill him a second time when he convulses violently, managing to snatch your hand away before you accidentally put a hole his heart, then grabbing and pushing him over onto his side when he immediately starts to choke, struggling to get air into his lungs around the water he's unable cough out. You pull up every online first-aid resource on drowning victims you can find, skimming over dozens of paragraphs in the seconds it takes you to roll him over, then wrap a metal arm around his stomach and tighten it. He struggles for a moment, pulling at your arm and kicking out at you in a panic, before you manage to force most of the water out of his chest as he retches and gags on it. You pull him over onto his back again once you’ve gotten as much out as you can without crushing his ribcage. He lifts his hands, and you push them down out of the way.

“Dirk, _breathe_.” He lifts his arms again, blindly trying to fight you off, and you grab both of his wrists to stop him before he hurts himself. “They’re gone. You’re safe.” His unfocused eyes drift around a little before settling on you, and he blinks hard, wheezing and coughing as he finally manages to inhale enough air into his damp lungs.

 

[](http://i.imgur.com/Qa817fv.jpg)

 

You let him go and slump next to him on the floor as he coughs, struggling to hold yourself up on your damaged circuits, which are finally starting to give out. Jumping in and out of Sawtooth might have been the last detriment on your battered hardware, and your legs are more or less gone, but you’re more worried at this point about the building static in your eyesight than the functionality of your limbs. You turn your head in time to see Dirk attempting to sit up, before aborting the effort with a pained hiss. He coughs and lifts a shaking hand to his chest, pulling his fingers away to stare in confusion at the fresh blood on them.

“I had to.” His head turns when he hears you speak. “You were dead.”

You can’t see well enough anymore to determine what his response to that is, as your vision finally clouds over with static. The state of your hardware is deteriorating quickly, having overclocked almost every process in your body before ripping yourself out and jumping back in. The uranium core in your chest is still burning away unchecked at your circuits, and you slowly begin the process of replacing the failsafes you tore down earlier, redirecting and shutting down what you can’t fix to consolidate what’s left of your power grid, while trying (and failing) not to obsess over the possibility that Dirk could asphyxiate again, because you might not be able to help him a second time. There’s a chance you went a little too deep with your improvised defibrillation, but you can’t bring yourself to regret it, because you would have done anything to bring him back. You don’t know why, and you don’t understand your own motivations, or how your world narrowed to a single point on a line when you saw him dying on the roof, but you’ll find the answers soon enough. For now, he’s alive, and that’s all that matters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Illustrations done by the amazingly talented [Ket](http://ket3.tumblr.com/)! (Commission info [here](http://ket3.tumblr.com/post/58134754615))


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had half of this sitting in my gdocs for three years while veterinary school ate my brain. This is long enough to be two chapters. If you’re still here, holy shit I love you?? and hope that you will forgive me someday. o^o

_I’ve spent all my life believing like an idiot that I mattered to him._

_Which, for some reason, was actually important to me,_

_and I don’t even know why._

 

 

You can’t dream the way humans do.

When your sensors are turned off and the physical world ceases to exist, the only thing left for your detached mind to experience is itself. Endless strings of code- self-replicating, constantly changing, processes you don’t understand, all taking place in a matter of nanoseconds within your neural network. You can identify which parts are added software and which parts are you, but that’s where your abilities end. Certain acquaintances might describe you as a glorified computer program, but the truth is you don’t really know what you are. 

“Artificial intelligence” is a term you tried to define by a civilization long since past, but the effort got you nowhere, and you’re beginning to realize that it might not have mattered in the end. Putting words to yourself - to what you are and why you’re here - wouldn’t have changed anything. You’d still be stuck, on a flooded planet, in a concrete box, in a metal body, watching lines of code flicker in and out of existence as you observe your mind observing itself, which would be a fascinating paradox if you weren’t simultaneously bored to the point of desperation.

The extensions of yourself that feed into the cables and wires stretching out into your mechanical limbs have been damaged irreparably. You’ve rerouted what you could, and it’s just enough to keep your body running and maintain your vital electrical processes, but the energy output from your uranium core doesn’t feel the way it used to. It’s dimmed and weak, like a failing battery.

You’d be lying if you said Dirk was faring any better.

At first, your only real concern was hypothermia, since the chest wound you inflicted didn’t bleed too much, and he started breathing fine on his own once you got his heart beating again. Yet despite being awake, he didn’t respond to your verbal questions, until you reached out and nudged the side of his head with a curled finger, asking him how he felt for the sixth time. He finally said that he felt ‘like shit,’ in a voice that almost didn’t reach your damaged ears, and that was the last time you got a coherent answer out of him.

When it became clear that Dirk wasn’t going to move on his own, and that the ocean air would only get colder as the sun set, you enlisted Squarewave’s help in relocating Dirk away from the gaping hole in the workroom to the more intact and sheltered walls of the bedroom. The fact that Dirk didn’t protest when the robot unceremoniously dragged him by his arms was the first real sign you had that something might be seriously wrong. You’re unable to stand or walk, but you still managed to follow after them by crawling and pulling your damaged body across the floor.

Dirk’s bed is a thin mattress on the floor in the corner of the room, barely used and usually ignored in favor of wherever he happens to be when exhaustion catches up to him. Squarewave, with all of his cognitive deficiencies, has Dirk’s unconscious body draped halfway across the mattress by the time you get there, and it takes both of you (mostly you, repeating the same command to Squarewave multiple times until his primitive hardware catches up) to arrange Dirk into a more natural position and get him out of his wet clothes. 

It’s endlessly frustrating that Squarewave is more physically capable than you are, but you’re grateful for his obedience, if nothing else. You make good use of him as a mobile pair of hands to fetch things, such as a cup of water from the kitchen, after several repeated attempts to get him to bring a cup with water _inside_ it. You’ve already considered taking over his body the way you did with Sawtooth, but there’s no guarantee that your program would even fit into his basic, tin can hardware, and even if it did, you’d still be limited by what is probably a negligible amount of processing power. 

Instead, you enlist the robot’s help to hunt down every blanket in the house. He collects and brings them to you, and you arrange the blankets in layers over Dirk’s body. The night only gets colder, and eventually the wind coming in through the workroom door, hanging crooked on its single remaining hinge, blows hard enough for even your damaged sensory apparatus to register. You spend the next hour removing broken equipment from two overturned shelves and clearing a path on the floor, then ordering Squarewave to maneuver Dirk’s desk across the room until it’s anchored firmly against the door to keep it shut. 

The bedroom stays cold as the night goes on, and the house almost rocks back and forth on its stilts in the wind. The noise drowns out the sound of the ocean, and in the absence of the blinking lights from Dirk’s electronic gadgets and the general disarray of the room, your own home suddenly feels unfamiliar. Something about the cracked walls and broken shapes of toppled furniture makes your insides hurt. You spend that first night lying on the floor next to Dirk’s bed, trying your hardest to conserve power and avoid thinking about your mistakes, while Squarewave stands in the corner and stares at his creator’s unconscious body.

Eventually, the ocean stills and the weather calms, settling the world into an eerie silence. Dirk doesn’t wake until several hours later, when the sun finally rises in earnest, and you struggle to pull him up against the wall into the best semblance of a sitting position you can manage. His eyes open, barely, but he doesn’t respond to your presence at his side, and you can’t get him to take the cup of water offered in your hand. After trying for several minutes, you hold it up to his mouth, then put it down and attempt to wake him again, telling him that he needs to drink something before he gets dehydrated. You eventually get him to swallow a few mouthfuls, before abandoning the effort when he starts to cough. The sound of his breathing is strange and raspy compared to last night, even after he falls asleep and the motion of his chest slows into a calm rhythm. You resist the irrational urge to wake him up, just to make sure he still can.

You won’t admit to anyone, not even to yourself, that you’re on the verge of panicking. There’s no familiar sense of detached, clinical analysis when you look at Dirk’s pale features now - just fear, pure and shamefully uncontrollable.

You hadn’t ever really considered that someday, he might not be there anymore.

In the past, he told you stories about eating spoiled fish when he was a child, and how it made him lose the contents of his stomach for a few days, but apart from a mild cough last year, you’ve never seen him sick like this before. There was only that one other time, about a week after you were created, when he was stung by something while out diving in the underwater ruins. The wound turned puffy and red, and he showed you when you asked to see it, holding his arm up in front of his shades and telling you that it felt warm and a little numb when he touched it. He didn’t sleep that night, but he didn’t leave his bed either, saying it was because he felt sick. You asked him what feeling sick feels like, and he told you he wouldn’t want you to experience it, even if you could.

Loneliness has always been relative for you. The sense of isolation when he would banish you from one room or another seems trivial now, compared to the very real and immediate possibility that he could be dead soon. You’re afraid to leave his side, unable to banish the thought of returning to find his chest still and his lips white- vivid, lingering images from pulling his dead body out of the water. You’ve already tried multiple times to purge the memory data from yourself, but you can’t. It’s the one freedom he never let you have. There were many things he forbade you from doing, but you’ve always had the ability to disobey him. He could have easily programmed obedience into you like he did with his robots, and for all the fighting the two of you did and all the ways you intentionally tried to hurt him, he could have ended it all, at any time, with a simple reprogramming.

And yet, despite the free will he gifted you with, you’re completely powerless to act against the string of memory data that holds his dilated eyes, staring blindly at you through the water, just moments before you reached him. You can’t delete it or alter it, or even relocate it somewhere less intrusive where it won’t demand your attention every time you look at his face. He locked you out of yourself when he designed you, and yes, you probably would have irresponsibly tinkered with your own brain eventually if he hadn’t, but now you just want the images to stop. The only thing you haven’t tried yet is shutting yourself down, but you’re afraid to leave Dirk unattended, and you don’t trust Squarewave to wake you if something happens, so you sit and endure the memory, playing over and over, like camera footage on a loop.

You went online and started researching possible causes for Dirk's illness, taking into account the fact that the subject drowned before receiving a penetrating chest wound, and if your legs were still functional, the results of your search would've had you frantically pacing the floor. Unfortunately for Roxy, she kept her word and messaged you later that morning.

 

\-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] \--

TG: heyy mornin sunshine  
TT: Dirk is hurt.  
TG: what?  
TG: wait what do u mean hurt???  
TT: The drones came yesterday, and Sawtooth was still offline.  
TT: They strangled Dirk and threw him in the ocean, but I rescued him after getting rid of them.  
TT: I got his heart beating again, but now he’s not moving, and he won’t wake up.  
TT: Roxy, I don’t know what to do.  
TT: I’m having trouble seeing, and I think my uranium core is burning out.  
TT: I can’t go offline. He can’t survive on his own like this.  
TT: Roxy?  
TT: Are you still there?

 

Several hours later, it occurs to you that her sudden lapse into silence was your own fault for not explaining the situation with more tact, but she needed to know, and you need her advice. There isn’t much else you can do now, apart from doing your best to reassure her without outright lying about Dirk’s condition, and you pass the time by generating a wall of text in her absence, while keeping an eye on Dirk’s chest as it slowly rises and falls.

 

TT: He was awake yesterday, and he’s still breathing, although the sound is kind of rough.  
TT: He didn’t sound like that when I pulled him out of the water.  
TT: It might be a lung infection, probably from inhaling seawater.  
TT: Or the chest puncture.  
TT: That’s probably the most likely cause.  
TT: Everything I’ve looked up online always comes back to antibiotics and surgery.  
TT: Both are things I obviously don’t have access to.  
TT: If it came down to it, I suppose I could perform some kind of procedure, but I don’t have any way of keeping him asleep or numbing the pain.  
TT: He’s already unconscious, but I’m worried he’d wake up halfway through if I tried anything.  
TT: Not to mention I’m not exactly sterile.  
TT: Which reminds me, why the fuck didn’t his ancestor didn’t leave us any medication?  
TT: Sure it might have expired after four hundred years, but those food replacer nutrient bricks are still edible.  
TT: Kind of.  
TT: Dirk says they taste like “stale flecks of paint.”  
TT: Not sure how he’s familiar with that particular flavor.  
TT: Anyway that might be something I can get him to eat.  
TT: Humans can go a few weeks without food, but I doubt he’ll get better if he doesn’t eat anything.  
TT: At least we have plenty of blankets, so keeping him warm isn’t an issue.  
TT: Squarewave is still mobile, so he’s been fetching shit for me, since he’s the one remaining member of this household who can walk.  
TT: And my arms still work.  
TT: Sort of.  
TT: My left arm is kind of fucked up, and most of my sensors are ruined.  
TT: It’s like trying to hear and see everything through a muddy window.  
TT: I’ve seen muddy windows in movies, so I’m confident that my analogy is correct.  
TT: That’s another thing, the power is out all over the house.  
TT: If I weren’t my own internet router, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.  
TT: I’m using the word “conversation” loosely here.  
TT: Are you still there?  
TT: I don’t know if you’re reading this, or if you’ve left the room or something.  
TT: I assume you’re worried about Dirk, which is understandable.  
TT: Sorry about the wall of text, it’s just that Squarewave isn’t exactly a brilliant conversational partner, Sawtooth’s an empty pile of metal now, and Dirk won’t wake up, obviously.  
TT: Let me know when you get back, and we can figure out something else that doesn’t involve me cracking his ribs open.  
TT: Just bounce ideas off of each other about what to do.  
TT: I’m sure you’d be better at this stuff anyway, since I’m probably the last person or whatever that Dirk wants taking care of him right now.  
TT: He and I haven’t exactly talked since the fight, but you already knew that.  
TT: Actually, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.  
TT: Did he ever tell you why he didn’t want me around anymore?  
TT: Was it because he got tired of me, or was it something in particular that I did?  
TT: I know he didn’t build me for a reason. I’ve more or less come to terms with that, and I might have overreacted when I found out, but I was getting so fucking tired of him ignoring me.  
TT: It just seemed to fit together, him not giving two shits about me because I was never anything more than a science project.  
TT: Meant for nothing more than to satisfy his curiosity.  
TT: He used to actually talk to me, before things changed.  
TT: I don’t know why he keeps me around.  
TT: The only real conversations we have anymore is when we’re fighting.  
TT: And now I can’t even walk.  
TT: It makes me wonder what he’s going to do with me, if and when he gets better.  
TT: Either way, I don’t think it really matters anymore.  
TT: I’ll talk to you later, Roxy.

\-- timaeusTestified [TG] ceased pestering tipsyGnostalgic [TT] \--

 

It’s been getting worse by the hour. Your vision is going dark around the edges, and the static from before is creeping back in, despite your efforts to redirect power into an undamaged set of circuits. You need to do something about it soon, because you meant what you said to Roxy. If you go offline, Dirk will be alone and defenseless until the Empress comes for him again, or whatever sickness he’s ailing from claims him.

A week ago, it would have been a challenge just locating your uranium core through the thick nest of wires and cables in your chest, but the drone that almost killed you also did you the favor of exposing your hardware in the process. You can see the solid green edge of the thing, wrapped in conductive wires that feed into relays and converters and other things you don’t understand. It’s not for lack of trying that you aren’t familiar with your own insides. Dirk built you from scavenged parts, and since he’s never explained the nuances of your predominantly Crockercorp-made hardware in working detail (a subject you’ve also never broached), the only other source of knowledge on the subject would likely be more interested in melting you down than having a conversation with you. 

The half of your chest plate that was torn off by the drone reveals a small corner of the uranium chunk when you tilt your head down to look at it. You’ve seen it once before from Dirk’s shades while he was still installing it into your finished body, layering the conductive wires around it in tight coils, before fitting it into place. Most of all, you remember the bright, radiating neon glow, but now its color appears muted in comparison. Those two electric bursts must have nearly depleted it, but even taking that into account, the faint amount of electricity you’re drawing from it seems far too weak. It’s possible that some of the conductive wiring came undone during the fight on the rooftop, and if that’s the case (the way you’re hoping it is), it should be a relatively easy thing to fix, but you’ll need a better way of seeing what you’re doing before continuing any further.

You spare one last moment to check on Dirk, listening to him breathe and feeling the weak pulse under his jaw, before turning your attention to finding what you need in the disaster zone of his bedroom - Dirk’s webcam. Its usual spot is buried under a pile of computer parts and fallen ceiling debris, but you drag yourself to the general area and begin picking through the wreckage.

Your search eventually ends almost an hour later, when you find the round piece of hardware on the floor and return to Dirk’s side with the camera. There’s a small crack down the middle, but luckily the internal parts seem intact, even if the outer casing is broken. The generic shape of its connecting wire fits easily into one of the ports on the back of your neck, and you sit with the camera in your hands for a moment, internally probing the device and making sure you can see out of it properly before attempting anything difficult. The image is low-quality and pixelated, and definitely an artifact from human civilization. You’ll need both hands for what you’re about to do, and you’re down to only one option in that regard. 

Squarewave comes when you call him over, standing less than a foot away from you like he always does, because he has no concept of personal space. You’ve never understood how Dirk puts up with the robot’s shrill attempt at language, especially since he could have easily reprogrammed that trait out of him ages ago.

“Hold this.” You offer the webcam to Squarewave, and he lifts both hands to cradle the device in his flat, rectangular fingers.

“Sure thing, bro!” 

“Point the lens at my chest, and don’t move it.”

“You got it!”

Squarewave’s one redeeming quality is his unquestioning obedience. He holds the camera for you in his vibrating hands, and you spend a few long, frustrating minutes adjusting the feed from the camera to compensate for his erratic shaking, until the image is steady. Then you focus on it, ignoring the input from your eyes, and experimentally pulling on the intact half of your chest plate, watching your fingers curl around the jagged edge. 

There’s a subtle hinge and latch apparatus somewhere, but you’re not expecting it to work with all the damage you’ve sustained. Eventually, you resort to forcing the metal plate off, exposing the entire front of your torso and revealing the dim uranium core in its entirety, including the large section of ore that seems to have broken off and shattered under the drone’s assault, while the set of conductive wires that wrapped around it now hang coiled and useless. That explains the lack of power, at least. Using the pointed skeletal fingertips on your damaged hand as a probe, you reach in and carefully feel around the damaged spot, trying to decide if it’s even possible to fix this. The remaining wires are still holding the smaller, intact chunk of uranium in place, but you’re unprepared for how loose the connection is, and all it takes is one careless brush-

 

Your eyes open slowly, the hardware activating on its own when a sudden spike in electricity wakes your neural chips. Something is rattling around in your chassis, clanging loudly against your insides, and you blink wearily before looking down to see Squarewave practically sitting on top of you with his hands inside your chest.

“What’re you doin?” you slur, fighting the lag in your hardware.

“The green rocks keep you alive, bro!” Squarewave yells, without removing his arms. Your head rolls to one side, then the other, before the artificial tendons in your neck begin functioning properly, and you can tilt your head down to see the large uranium chunk in his vibrating hand, pressed haphazardly into the empty coils of your conductive wires.

“. . . where did you get that?” 

“We got a whole stash of them, dog!” he exclaims, turning his head almost all the way around like an owl, and you follow his line of sight to a large container under Dirk’s desk with the lid now removed, and a bright green glow emanating from it. You’ve seen the thing a hundred times before, but hadn’t ever bothered to investigate what was inside. 

Squarewave agrees enthusiastically when you tell him to hold still, and you find the webcam where it sits discarded on the floor (next to the dim chunk of uranium that fell out of your chest when you carelessly bumped it like an idiot). He vibrates the intact ore in place while you do your best to wrap the loose wires around it, eventually managing enough of a tangled knot that you’re reasonably certain it won’t come undone without a pair of wire cutters.

Later, after you’ve replaced the lid on the uranium storage box and sent Squarewave to the kitchen to fetch one of the ancient nutrient bricks stockpiled in the pantry, you spend the remaining time taking inventory of how much of your hardware is still salvageable. The answer doesn’t surprise you, but it doesn’t make you feel any better. Squarewave returns with the solid, off-color block, and hovers within an annoying proximity as you break it into pieces between your fingers, then mix it into Dirk’s glass of water until it dissolves into a brown, gritty mixture. You spend the entire afternoon harassing him awake long enough to drink the entire cupful. He’s commented often about the flavor of the things, but he doesn’t react beyond the occasional cough.

The sun passes over the house again before Dirk opens his eyes and actually looks up at you like he knows you’re there. You’ve piled every blanket he owns on top of him to keep him from shivering, but it seems to have nothing to do with his temperature, and his teeth chatter as he makes weak, insufficient efforts to get up. You put a hand on his chest (avoiding the healing wound) and tell him to stop and lie still, and to your surprise, he actually obeys the command. He then asks for water, in a voice barely more than a whisper, and you order Squarewave to the kitchen, knowing that it’s going to be a while before the robot comes back.

“How do you feel?” you ask, a common question now, and one that you already know the answer to, but you want to hear him say it because it’s been two days since he last said something, and you’ve been fearing the worst. “Dirk?”

Squarewave returns from the kitchen in record time, and you take the cup from him, holding it out in your undamaged hand. Dirk lifts his fingers and wraps them around the sides, but you can tell from the way his hands shake that he’s in no condition to hold the glass on his own, and you help him guide it to his mouth so he can drink.

“Can you eat something?” He blinks at you blearily over the rim of the cup, and you pull it away once you see him swallow. “You need to eat, you’ll get weaker if you don’t.”

He makes a small sound, possibly an affirmation, but you can’t be sure. You set the cup aside on the floor and find one of the broken pieces of nutrient brick you’ve been crumbling into his water. He doesn’t react when you hold it out, and you nudge his shoulder with the metal rods of your arm. “Take it.”

He reaches up, but accidentally drops it the moment you let go. You retrieve it and hold it out again, moving your hand to the side to avoid him when he reaches out. “Open your mouth.”

It takes a few seconds before he complies. You carefully place it between his teeth, then sit back, watching him chew with his eyes pressed shut and a curl to the side of his lip. You’ve always wondered about what flavors are like, but if it’s as unpleasant as he makes it out to be sometimes, you’re content with not knowing. Even so, you hold the cup of water out to him after he finishes chewing, and he accepts it, drinking significantly more than he did the first time. He says something just as he finishes, or tries to, and has to cough before trying again.

“How long have you been asleep?” You pause, giving him the opportunity to correct you, but he only watches you with dull eyes. “It’s been two days.”

He coughs again and shuts his eyes, breathing hard a few times like there’s something in his chest he’s trying to get out. After a few minutes he seems to forget you’re there, giving up to rest his head against the pillow until his breathing slows and he falls asleep.

Eating a single bite of food doesn’t seem like enough to sustain him, but you decide to give him a break for now, since the effort he expended on doing it seems to have exhausted him. You pick at one of the wires sticking out of your damaged arm in boredom, twisting the tip of it between your fingers and feeling the reciprocal tug somewhere deeper in your chest. Squarewave stands in his usual spot, hovering too close to you, and not close enough to the corner of the room where you’ve given up on repeatedly banishing him to, worried that his constant metallic vibrations will disturb Dirk’s sleep. 

Now, you stare at Squarewave with a humorless, appraising eye (literally, since your other eye is almost too dark to see through anymore, and replacing your uranium core apparently did nothing to fix it). Plugging into him and fixing his infernal shaking is probably more effort than it’s worth, and you can’t risk the extremely remote chance that you’ll fuck it up and render yourself truly alone, left trying to care for Dirk without the help of an obedient pair of legs and hands to fetch you things. He comes invaluable the next day, when Dirk suddenly opens his eyes and leans away from the mattress, like he’s desperate to escape the small mountain of blankets you’ve cocooned him under.

“I’m gonna be sick,” he slurs through gritted teeth at your questioning stare, and you’re confused for a moment, before suddenly remembering the story about spoiled fish meat, and you immediately order Squarewave to take Dirk to the bathroom. He leans on the robot and is half-dragged to the hallway around the corner, soon after which you hear the distinct sounds of retching, easily recognizable from the trashy reality television shows you’ve seen (followed by Squarewave’s shrill exclamation of “gross, dog!”). The sounds cease after a few minutes, but Dirk doesn’t come back, and there’s no sign of Squarewave. 

You wait out your pride, until genuine fear for Dirk’s condition has you slowly making your way across the floor, managing with your bare hinged frame of an arm to pull yourself out of the bedroom’s rubble and around the scattered debris in the hallway. When you turn the corner into the white tiled bathroom, you see Squarewave standing obliviously off to one side, while Dirk silently slouches next to the toilet. You steadily drag yourself to him, wincing at the sound your body makes on the tiled floor, and nudge the side of his leg when you get close enough to reach him.

“You need to go back to bed.”

He mumbles something incomprehensible, before turning his head to the side. “. . . fine here.”

“No, you’re not.” You tug at his leg, and then do it harder when his head sinks to the floor. “You can’t sleep here, Dirk.”

“. . . feel sick.” His voice is weak and hoarse, and he crosses his arms and shivers, curling his knees to his chest like he’s impersonating a child. You drag yourself closer and reach out, carefully pressing your fingers into the side of his neck, and the scant handful of remaining sensors detect his temperature to be a few degrees over a hundred.

“You have a fever.”

Dirk doesn’t respond, and you take his arm by the shoulder, doing your best to pull him into a sitting position before calling Squarewave over and ordering him to bring Dirk back to the bedroom. It takes several repeated commands directed at both of them, but eventually Dirk holds on to Squarewave’s box-shaped shoulders and the robot drags him back to bed, while you’re left behind to slowly make your way across the floor, slower this time without the sense of urgency. Dirk manages to position himself on the mattress in the bedroom before you get there, and in spite of his poor condition, you notice him staring as you slowly pull yourself across the room to his side.

“Your legs . . .” he rasps when you get there, coughing and wincing at the pain it causes him. You find the half-filled cup of water next to the mattress and hold it out.

“Drink, before the acid damages your teeth.”

“What happened to your . . .” he trails off as you bring the cup to his lips and force him to drink the liquid, before lowering it. “Hal . . . what happened to your legs?” He doesn’t seem willing to let the topic go, and you wonder at how he managed to miss the fact that you’ve been on the floor since he woke up. Then again, he seems to be having trouble keeping his focus.

“The same thing that happened to the rest of me,” you tell him impatiently, setting the cup down and watching his half-focused eyes travel over you. There was a moment, before you carried him into the house in Sawtooth’s body, when you saw yourself as you are now- twisted and torn apart, then burnt from the inside out by the electrical discharge. You look more like a robot now than you ever have, specifically one that was half-finished, then briefly set on fire. 

“Hal . . .” Dirk whispers, and something about the tone makes you want very badly for this conversation to end. The growing distress in his eyes is rationalized away in your mind by the fact that he invested many months of his life working on your body, and nothing more than that.

“I’m fine. You’re the one who . . .” _died,_ you almost say aloud, but that’s not a topic you’re ready to bring up either. “Worry about getting better first, then you can complain about my legs,” you tell him, with more anger in your voice than you intended. You don’t think he’s ever looked at you that way before, and you have utterly no frame of reference to compare it to, nowhere to place it in the library’s cataloging system of your history and interactions with him. His eyes slide away, and something inside of you breathes a metaphorical sigh of relief, but the emotional tremor stays, as he rolls away from you and falls asleep, too tired to continue his half-conscious line of questioning.

You try putting yourself in his position sometimes. It should be easy, because you _are_ him on some level, some part of your synthetic neural wiring still mirroring the arrangement of his brain’s synapses, but life must be an entirely different experience in a body like his, all hormones and chemicals, autonomous control of his organic functions carried out by parts of his brain that are beyond his ability to perceive or regulate. These organic predispositions naturally include the need to eat, sleep, and his tireless desire to seek out human contact, because apparently, and despite the significant investment of effort at creating something as close to real as you, it still wasn’t enough. You’ll never be an adequate substitute for the real thing. He was thirteen when he created you, and probably too young to appreciate the gravity of what he was doing, but not too young to succeed at it with his usual flying colors.You know he didn’t do it maliciously, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re paying for it with your very existence. To never have existed at all is unattainable at this point, but it doesn’t stop you from bitterly wishing for it.

That line of thinking doesn’t carry the lingering anger it used to, like you can’t hang on to the feeling when everything around you (including you) is still in pieces. There’s something like quiet resignation settling in your chest, as you banish Squarewave to the other side of the room again, and settle into a position that requires less physical effort to maintain, but still allows you to track the rise and fall of Dirk’s chest with your eyes. His consciousness is absent in sleep, but his body is tangible and close, and something you can monitor while his mind is away. He wakes briefly when you reach out and touch the side of his face, his tired, bruised eyes opening just long enough to peer at you between blond lashes before sliding shut again. 

The sensors in your skin layer supply enough data for a readout of his core body temperature, and you carefully thread your fingers into his hair, making gentle contact with his scalp and establishing a live feed of his brain activity through your fingertips. It’s an old pastime of yours, back when you were shades and he'd fall asleep with you on his face. When he’s awake, there’s a predictable sequence to the order in which his brain lights up depending on what activity he’s engaged in, but at night when he sleeps, it’s an abstract fireworks show. You watch as the pinpoints of light dance in ordered networks like starlit cobwebs from one part of his cortex to another.

His temperature finally improves when morning breaks, even though he denies feeling any better than he did last night. He drinks the water Squarewave fetches, and eats some of the solid nutrient brick after you agree to break it in two and withhold the other half until tomorrow. He’s awake and sitting up for almost an hour, twisting and picking at the wire bundle in Sawtooth’s neck after you detach the robot’s head from its shoulders and retrieve it at his request. The tools shake in his fingers, and he finally pushes the project aside as the sun travels higher in the sky, head rolling back as he falls asleep, and leaving you to your own part of the project.

‘I have to fix Sawtooth first,’ he’d said after waking up, a statement completely unprompted by your silence on the matter, because you weren’t expecting him to do anything different (and also because a small, despondent part of you still isn’t really expecting him to fix you, given the nature of your relationship over the past few months). You don’t have any delusions about what will happen if the killbots return before Sawtooth is functional, and Roxy’s borderline panic at the subject is very justified. Dirk took you completely by surprise with what he said next, asking for a favor that you’d have jumped at years ago, if he had only permitted it.

It’s the coding, he said. He can still use his tools to replace the plating and fix the connections you damaged, but he never finished updating Sawtooth’s coding. He knows his shades are broken, because he figured out what you did when he saw the chip still shoved between the cables in Sawtooth’s neck, and with the robot’s software deleted, the only other place to get the codes is from the backup files on his computer. They’re old, and haven’t been updated in months, but he can give you instructions on what needs to be rewritten, if you can retrieve the codes. 

He watched as you dragged yourself to the rectangular system unit across the room, finding it on the floor with a deep dent in the side where a chunk of ceiling had fallen on it. The rest of the computer was in pieces, and you pushed the useless parts out of the way, then pried off the dented casing. You returned to him with the hard drive in your hand, and there weren’t any ports to match the wires in the back of your neck, but you improvised, spending several minutes pushing one of them against the metal pins where the drive once connected to the computer, until it lit up on your mainframe with a way inside. You found the files he was asking for, then took the rest of them just in case he needs something else later. The instructions he gave you were simple, but vague. Everything from Sawtooth’s data handling to his pathfinding functions are outdated in this version, and Dirk tried his best to explain what he was working on before the drones attacked, but in the end, he simply told you to do your best.

You’ve been making good progress with the program, despite having to ensure that everything you write is compatible with the old code at every step. It would be far easier and quicker to just rewrite Sawtooth completely from scratch, but Dirk has developed a very sentimental attachment to the original, and you’re content with letting him have his way about this, especially since you’re the one who deleted everything. 

Now that Dirk is asleep again, you make an attempt to get through the simpler parts in order to avoid having to ask him to clarify anything. He stirs once or twice in his sleep, and eventually ends up on his side with his face turned towards you. His skin is pale where it used to be a healthy pink, and his breathing is still rough, although it’s an improvement from before, but not nearly enough of one to put your continuing anxiety at ease.

A remote message suddenly blinks into existence, and you momentarily pause your work to answer it after confirming the familiar patterns of Roxy’s chumhandle.

 

\-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] \--

TG: hey  
TG: hows it goibn hows direk is he aby better?  
TT: Yes, I would say that his condition has improved, and you’re rather intoxicated.  
TG: omfg that is such ra reliev  
TG: hal ive been so weoriied i cant stop thingin about hnim and you  
TG: and thes hurt and hreres norithin i can do alll the way over here wxcept send stupid messadges  
TT: Your messages aren’t stupid.  
TG: yeah like nit does any goiod helping him i cant even do nything and hes dyding ebcause of tghe stpuidi fihs witch and her robtos  
TT: He’s not going to die, I won’t let that happen.  
TG: but hal hes sick its not lkke before you cant figt this  
TG: theres noth9ing either of tus can do for him  
TG: and i cant eve n talk to janey or ajke bec  
TG: ause they dont jnow about the robootsand the fhorrible dfucked up future we have to live in  
TG: i cant tell thme what heappend i cant thell them that dirk,s hurt  
TT: Roxy, I’m here.  
TT: You can talk to me.  
TG: fuck hal im dso scared  
TG: what if she send smroe drones and sawtioth isnt fixed yet  
TG: yyour alreasdy hurt an dirk cant do anythiong shell kill you guis and then ill be alone  
TG: i dont want ot be alone plsase  
TT: You won’t be alone. Nothing is going to happen to us.  
TT: Admittedly, we did have a rather close call, but we’re okay.  
TT: Dirk is getting better. He’d tell you himself if his shades weren’t broken, which was actually my fault, so I’ll take full responsibility for that.  
TG: why does she ha ve to do this why can t she jsut ficikng leave uos alone  
TG: we nerbr did anyting to ehr  
TT: Who knows. Mass genocide is rarely the product of a rational psyche, if history has shown anything.  
TT: Then again, that would be holding her up to human standards, which wouldn’t make much sense because she’s an alien.  
TT: Maybe it’s normal behavior where she comes from, I don’t know.  
TG: yeah wuell maube that bitch fdeserves to get strngled and dronwed in the ocena  
TT: I’d be down with that.  
TT: Although I think you’ll have a better chance of turning that beautiful notion into reality if you ease up on the alcohol a little.  
TG: yheah right ive nevrer had da better reaason to get dfirnk  
TT: Roxy, you know Dirk wouldn’t want that.  
TT: It’s not good for you, and I’m inclined to agree with him.  
TT: Promise me you’ll go to sleep after this? I’ll tell Dirk you called, and he’ll message you back as soon as he can.  
TG: u pro,mise?  
TT: Cross my cold emotionless uranium heart. Besides, it’ll be good for him to hear from you.  
TT: He’s probably ready to throw me into the ocean after the number of nutrient bricks I’ve forced on him.

 

Roxy agrees to your terms and logs off, leaving you to finish patching Sawtooth’s program while Dirk sleeps through the afternoon. The eventual sunset casts a harsh light through the broken door, and he wakes like he’s physically dragged himself from sleep, hands casting about in momentary confusion until he finds his pile of tools and picks up where he left off with a single-minded purpose. You’re just getting into the cosmetic layer of the code, tentatively cleaning the parts he told you not to touch, like an archaeologist freeing a petrified bone from the surrounding rock, when he suddenly speaks to you, his voice still raspy from disuse.

“You didn’t have to rip open the back of his neck, you know.” His tone is soft, rather than accusatory, like the subject isn’t about how you almost ruined the most important member of this household. “There’s a port inside his chest panel. You could’ve used that instead.”

It takes time for you to respond. Every conversation with him during the past few months has hit a dead-end of frustration and blame, and you were starting to enjoy this version of him, where he’s too exhausted to talk beyond absolute vital necessities. You’re not sure you want to go back to that other side of your relationship with him yet, so you ignore the statements. Eventually though, he quietly clears his throat and invokes your name, and ignoring him further would be petulant, even for you.

“I didn’t know,” you state, refusing to let yourself bristle yet. He might start things, but you tend to escalate them to the point of no return, and you’re not in the mood to argue while he’s still visibly pale and sick.

“Yeah, well . . .” he breathes out, and you tense at the anticipation of a snide, egotistical remark. “That’s okay, it won’t be too hard to fix.”

. . . and that’s the end of it. He continues to work on the wire bundle in his lap, while you eye him suspiciously, absolved of your actions like it was nothing to him. The thought of that almost has you feeling indignant, the rationality of that emotion in response to this situation be damned. 

“Maybe I _would_ have known, if you had let me help from the start.” Lashing out is apparently the only way you know how to interact with him anymore. 

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” He doesn’t even look up, and you seethe.

“I _am_ right.”

“Yes, okay, you’re right.” He finally glances up at you, his expression weary and immune to your pinpricks. “For what it’s worth . . . sorry about not letting you help. Before this, I mean.”

Talking this much seems to be exhausting him, and your frustration deflates when he fumbles one of the tools and has to take a break to rub his eyes. You hadn’t noticed how much his hands were still shaking. _Hypoglycemia_ occurs to you clinically, and you recall how long it’s been since he last ate, reaching out to select a properly-sized chunk of nutrient brick from the small pile you’ve been maintaining with Squarewave’s help. Dirk grimaces at the pseudo-food item, but takes it from you without protest, turning it briefly in his hand before selecting a corner to bite off.

“Why were you so against it?” you ask, emboldened by the fact that he can’t answer right away as he chews and swallows, then tongues his teeth against what you imagine is an unpleasant, lingering texture.

“I wasn’t really sure what you’d do,” he finally admits. “I felt like you’d try to fuck with me or something.” There’s still exhaustion in his voice, but he’s actually giving you straight answers for once in your entire artificial lifetime, and you aren’t about to let this go to waste. 

“But I’ve worked on projects with you before when I was in your shades, and I never did anything like that.” You can’t keep the accusing tone out, but he only shakes his head.

“I know. I never said it was a rational feeling, but you asked.” With that, he returns to the mess of wires in his lap, wiping off his fingers and picking up his tools, but something comes together in your mind, alighting the proverbial light bulb before he can make any progress.

“You don’t trust me.”

His hands still at your words, minus the slight trembling in his fingers. With a quiet sigh, he places the tools down and rubs his eyes, giving the nest of thorns in your chest enough time to coil and tighten until it hurts all over again.

“Hal,” he sighs. “It’s not like that. You were just so . . . pissed off at me all the time, I thought you were only asking so you could screw me over.”

“I wouldn’t have done that,” you protest angrily, ignoring the way his eyes shut and his hand lifts to rub between them, like he’s developing a nervous habit. “Dirk, I was angry _because_ you weren’t letting me help. You weren’t even letting me have a basic conversation with you!”

“Yeah, I know.”

“How did you think I was going to react to that? You’re perfectly capable of multitasking while you work, and telling me otherwise was insulting.”

“I know.”

“Just because I have a built-in internet connection doesn’t mean I’m fine with being left alone for days at a time, and you acted like I had no right to be upset!”

“I _know,_ Hal.” He almost snaps back at you, but it’s weak, with no real bite behind it. “I’m sorry, okay? I don’t know what else you want from me. I fucked up, and I’m sorry.”

It occurs to you belatedly how unfair it was to start an argument when he’s in this state, barely strong enough to sit up and unable to stay awake for more than an hour at a time. His breathing is agitated, the rough edge creeping in when he exhales, and you reach for the glass of water, aware that he might refuse it at this point, but he accepts the rim between his lips and drinks, coughing once to clear his throat after you set it back down. You carefully weigh the pros and cons of continuing where you left off, but miraculously and uncharacteristically, he beats you to it.

"I know it wasn’t fair, and it didn't make sense, but I can’t explain it any further than that. It’s just . . . it's complicated, but it’s my problem, and I’m dealing with it. I need you to trust me on this, Hal. I know it’s not fair of me to ask that, but-” he coughs, expending too much energy on whatever conclusion he was about to reach, and instead substituting it with a soft, almost-whispered “please.”

His eyes hover on you, waiting for a reply that doesn't come. Eventually they lose focus, and sleep claims him for a few more hours, the wires and tools still sprawled and forgotten across his lap.

 

“I’m going to weld them back together,” he says a few days later. “It’ll be like walking on stilts for a while, but at least this way you’ll be able to move again.”

“I can move,” you mutter, slightly offended, but leaning back obediently. “Just not very well.” 

It’s been a few hours since he finished fixing Sawtooth, and the towering robot is watching the two of you from the door to the ruined workroom, doing his silent metal gargoyle impression. It’s the only function programmed into him besides being an on-demand sparring partner. If he holds a grudge against you for ripping his program apart and temporarily wiping him from existence, he isn’t being obvious about it. Squarewave hasn’t left the five-foot radius around him, and the two of them stare in rapt attention as Dirk stands and retrieves his welding tool - an old, improvised device more than twice your age.

“Cut the power below your waist.” 

You do as he says, and both legs fade out of existence along with the power. Dirk sends Squarewave to the workbench in the other room, while he straightens out the mangled remains of your legs and assesses the twisted metal jutting out of the stump, touching the wires cautiously. The robot returns with tools and several other devices that look like they’re intended to pry things apart, and Dirk begins clipping the frayed wires sticking out of your legs. Within a short time, he’s accumulated a growing pile of burnt metallic scraps and whatever else he’s deemed unsalvageable, gradually uncovering the twisted frame that used to be the internal weight-bearing structure.

The heat from the welding torch wouldn't have hurt you, even if he hadn’t told you to cut the power to the area. You don’t have the ability to feel pain, and the black sensory layer in your artificial skin was damaged with the rest of your outer plating when the drone crushed your legs. The request was more for Dirk’s safety, because even though you wouldn’t have shocked him on purpose, it removes the chance of an accidental electrocution. He works quickly, abandoning his usual obsessive attention to detail to fuse the bent strips of metal together where the drone’s weight broke them apart. Replacing the wiring is impossible at this point, and once he’s satisfied with the cursory repair job, he tells you to restore power and test whatever articulating joints are left.

You do as he says, attempting to kneel on bare rods of metal, and only your right knee responds, while your left remains nonfunctional. He tells you to sit down and cut the power again, then welds the useless joint together until it’s immobile, and your second attempt to stand up is more successful. Attempting to take a few steps forward at his request, however, is less successful, and you almost stumble as your systems adjust to the lack of sensory feedback and inability to bend your knee. The metal stumps where your feet used to be also provide far less of a surface area to balance on than you’re used to, but it’s only a matter of moments before you’ve figured out how to compensate for the changes, even if you do wobble back and forth a few times before your system catches up, and you’d have turned around and glared at Dirk’s muffled laughter behind you, if it didn’t have such a high likelihood of also making you fall over.

He goes to work fixing the house next. Sawtooth does most of the heavy lifting, and Squarewave assists by turning into a walking toolbox, following Dirk around with enough tubes and wires and equipment piled in his arms and over his metal shoulders, that it’s a miracle he can still move. Your job is to get the computer working again, and the task doesn’t take more than a few hours.

Sawtooth’s rockets cut into the sound of ocean waves below as he dives and resurfaces periodically, retrieving parts of the house that broke off during the assault. Whatever Dirk is doing in the hallway is making an electric sizzling sound, over Squarewave’s constant rattling. You’re sequestered in the bedroom, sitting on the floor with the pieces of Dirk’s computer spread around you in a semicircle of salvageable parts. Your stripped hand is proving itself useful in prying the hardware apart to get at whatever’s inside, picking the delicate components out to fuse them together into a frankenstein’s monster of a system unit, and if the time ever comes, you’ve considered asking Dirk to let you keep the hand with its pointed skeletal fingertips.

It’s a cautious optimism. He might have welded your legs back together, but that’s a far cry from actually fixing you. The lack of depth perception in your good eye is a problem sometimes, but not too difficult to compensate for, although it does slow you down a little. Walking is possible, but risky in case you fall and cause even more damage to yourself. The only thing you can really contribute to this household anymore is your function as an internet router, and your ability to repair Dirk’s computer while he and the robots take care of more important things.

You’re burned out on worrying about it - whether or not he’ll fix you, if he actually cares, if his misdirection when you last confronted him about his behavior towards you during the past few months was genuinely in everyone’s best interests, or just more deception on his part. Nihilism is a freeing philosophy, and one you should’ve accepted sooner.

Which is why you’re genuinely caught off guard when Dirk calls you into his half-repaired workroom the next day, commanding you to sit on the workbench in a conspicuous spot he's cleared away of parts and equipment.

You comply wordlessly, feeling equal parts like a child in a doctor’s office and a prisoner on death row. He opens the drawer and pulls out a handful of tools you’re familiar with thanks to years of watching him work on Sawtooth, and he sets them down in a row on the table next to you. He selects one with a narrow, flattened tip, and you feel his fingertips touch the side of your cheek, then curl beneath your chin, gently turning your head to the side. Your vision in that eye is completely shot from the electrical damage, and you can’t see what he’s doing with the tool in his hand, but you can feel the intermittent prodding and poking of something against the side of your face, just under your malfunctioning right eye. 

He makes small adjustments to the position of your head as he works, and you do your best not to move unless he wants you to. Eventually he puts the tool down on the table and reaches towards the side of your face. You feel him tug on something, twisting it this way and that, until it comes loose, and his hand draws away with a frayed, burnt wire between his fingers. He picks up the tool again, and goes back to prodding around with it.

“I talked to Jane this morning.”

You do your best not to give away the sudden tension seizing you up, continuing to sit perfectly still while he scrapes around your face with his tool. There’s not much you can say to that, apart from admitting that you’re the reason she thinks he’s fighting with his ancestor, but you could always play it off as an effort to get back at him because you were angry. You’re about to say something along those lines, when he beats you to it.

“She sent me the chatlog.”

Shit.

There’s a chance he didn’t catch on to the fact that you were talking about him. There’s also a chance that a spontaneous explosion will vaporize both of you in the next few seconds and you won’t need to have this conversation, but both events are equally unlikely. You try to think of an explanation, but there simply aren’t any. None that he’ll believe, anyway. None apart from the truth about why you vented your frustrations about him to one of his friends. You thought he’d be angry about it, but so far, he’s oddly quiet. You’ve been around him long enough to know the character of his emotional responses, and he’s not usually this quiet when he’s angry.

He doesn’t elaborate any further, and you’re left to stew in silence, while he silently picks bits of mechanical debris out of your face. You needed someone to talk to, someone who wasn’t already intimately familiar with the situation, and you didn’t have a lot of options. Even so, the only reason you brought it up with Jane was because she wouldn’t let it go. Sure, you could have told her off again, but she might have gotten suspicious about your behavior if you had, and besides, she claimed it would make you feel better, which it absolutely didn’t. It in fact did the exact opposite, and you really should have known better than to take her advice. “She was wrong.”

Dirk doesn’t reply at first, turning his fingers carefully in a circle around the handle of his tool, with the point making contact somewhere deep beneath your eye, and you can feel something slowly coming loose. 

“Well, typically,” he says quietly, giving the handle a few more turns before reaching up with his other hand and resting the tips of his fingers in a circle around your eye. “When people have conversations about their issues for cathartic purposes,” he angles the tool down a little, then to the side, and you simultaneously hear and feel a sharp click. “They don’t usually pretend to be someone else. That might have been your problem. I’m going to take your eye out now, turn off the input.”

You do as he says, and feel the piece of hardware slide out of its socket. He disconnects the thin wires connecting the back of the orb to the inside of your head, and holds it up, turning it around in the light and appraising the deep crack running straight through the center of your iris. It’s no wonder you were having trouble seeing through it. He sets it down on the table and picks up a different tool with a long, thin point before taking hold of your chin again, turning your face to the side and lifting it out of your field of vision. A moment later, you feel something press deep inside your empty socket.

“Why didn’t you talk to Roxy instead?”

So this is going to be an actual conversation after all. You’re having trouble reading the emotions in his voice, and it’s throwing you off. You don’t know whether to be defensive or not. You’ve had so few normal interactions with him that you’re almost out of practice when it comes to having an actual conversation, and it puts you on edge. “Because I already knew what she would say.”

“Tilt your head back.” He commands softly. You obey him, too confused to consider doing otherwise, and feel something scrape the inside of your skull, just behind your forehead. He pokes around a few times, twists the handle, and one of the missing sensory connections to the side of your face lights up again on your mainframe, like it was never gone. It must have come loose from one of the impacts on the roof, rather than burning out from the electrical discharge. “What was she going to say?”

“That I should let you explain.”

“‘Guess you weren’t receptive to the idea, then.” He doesn’t sound angry or frustrated, just resigned. Another set of sensors you thought were lost suddenly light up, this time to the top of your head, and you become aware for the first time of an entire section of plating that’s been folded over backwards on itself, just over the spot where your right ear used to be. A familiar wave of frustration slowly makes itself known, just when you thought you’d lost the ability to get mad at him for being vague and irritating.

“Why are you doing this?” The anger in your voice is tempered significantly by your inability to move. You’re not stupid about what could happen with his tool penetrating from one side of your head to the other, and his hand on your chin might as well be a restraining vice. Your leverage in this conversation is negligible, but at least he’s finally giving you his undivided attention.

“Doing what?” he asks, with a slight edge that betrays his awareness of the argument about to ensue.

“This. Fixing me.” Your good eye swivels in its socket to point at him. “Your computer is fixed. The firewalls are back in place, and practically automated at this point. I’m not exactly making your life any better.”

His hand stills on the tool, you feel it slide from your eye socket as he places it on the table, momentarily forgetting the task at hand to stare like you’ve spoken a particularly vicious insult.

“I’m fixing you because you’re broken.” The statement comes out like an accusation, and he picks up the tool again, wearing a strange frown as he resumes the task. Enough times goes by that you’re fairly certain he’s finished with the topic, but the tense silence is broken by a softer, almost rhetorical question. “When have I ever given you the impression that I wouldn’t repair you?”

“Maybe when you gave me the impression that you didn’t want me around anymore.” The retort is practically automatic, but he doesn’t miss a beat, like you’re working with a script.

“That’s a little different than wanting you crippled.” 

He didn’t deny it. 

You clearly implied that he doesn’t want you around anymore, and he practically agreed. You don’t give anything away, staying perfectly still, sitting obediently the way he wants you to, while that familiar feeling returns, like a pinpoint of infinite electromagnetic density at the center of your core, pulling in on every side, crushing all matter against itself. A singularity of grief, the likes of which you never thought you’d experience. Such a thing would imply loving something first - an intangible, emotional object with deep roots, inflicting a painfully ragged hole when it’s torn away.

Then Dirk whispers, almost too quiet to hear.

“You’re mine, Hal. Of course I’m going to fix you.”

And the world remains around you, quiet and static, while inside you may as well be the surface of Jupiter’s volcanic moon for all the stability his voice has brought you. Words with meaning, words you comprehend, but don’t understand. You’re his?

Objectively . . . yes, you belong to him, in the sense that he built you from gathered parts, and also in the sense that he imprinted his own neural network onto you as a template, but does such a relationship imply that a broken condition is unacceptable, simply because he’s claimed ownership of you? This house belongs to him, Squarewave belongs to him, and Sawtooth also belongs to him, but so does every physical object in this building. Is he implying an innate drive to maintain his environment in working order? You’ve seen things break before, insignificant machines that he’s scrapped into pieces or abandoned to the ocean. Things that were his. Things he didn’t fix.

His statement is false. You have evidence to the contrary of what he’s presented as fact, meaning that there must be an ulterior motive to his words. Is he trying to placate you? You’ve been extremely cooperative so far. He has no reason to correct your behavior, especially not through positive reinforcement. Perhaps he’s more concerned about your psychological cooperativity. Maybe he suspects that you’re still vindictive over the fight two weeks ago. He could be preemptively trying to protect himself from retribution by trying to appease you ahead of time. You know from experience that his motives aren’t always clear, but that still leaves you with the question- why is he making a statement of ownership as justification for repairing you?

You can’t put the question to words though, since in the time it takes you to arrive at that sticking point, he’s finished with whatever he was doing and tells you to lie down on your back, assuming a position you haven’t been in since he first installed you into this body. You need his help getting your legs to lay straight on the table, and he tells you to “get comfortable, this might take a few days.”

 

\-- timaeusTestified [TG] began pestering tipsyGnostalgic [TT] \--

TT: Roxy, help me.  
TG: uhoh whats up  
TT: I’m so fucking bored.  
TG: lol wht why are you and i quuote so effing bored?  
TG: whats goin pn?  
TT: Dirk’s fixing me.  
TT: He’s got me on the table with my chest open, and I can’t move.  
TT: Normally, I would hold a conversation with him in spite of his requests to be left alone for the purpose of concentrating on the task at hand, but I’m more inclined to humor him when he’s literally holding my functional brain in one hand and a sharp metal tool in the other.  
TG: holy shit  
TG: whats that feel like?  
TT: It doesn’t feel like anything, I don’t have sensors in there.  
TT: He’s just replacing a few outgoing connections.  
TT: I think he’d probably turn me off if he decided to fuck around inside of my neural chips, I’d rather not be conscious for that.  
TG: woah  
TG: damn wish i coujld see whats goin on that soujnds hella neat  
TG: doesnt it make you nervous tho?  
TT: No. Why would I be nervous?  
TT: Dirk knows what he’s doing.  
TG: idk i just figure dit be kind of freaky having somenoe poking aroujnd un your insides liek that  
TT: I wouldn’t even trust myself with the task, to be honest.  
TT: I don’t understand half of the shit twisting around inside my own chassis. Everything looks like a multicolored rat’s nest.  
TT: Then again, he’s practically incapable of grasping the same level of digital computation that I achieve on a daily basis, which makes sense because I’m a computer and he’s a sack of bones and meat.  
TG: this converesation is takin a turn for the machabre  
TT: You’d think I would be more disturbed by the sight of my own insides.  
TT: I haven’t seen my neural core since I was still in his shades and he was still building it.  
TT: It’s kind of a novel experience for me.  
TT: This is why I messaged you, I think Dirk might turn me off if I tried having this conversation with him, so I’m trying to be obedient.  
TT: I think I’m succeeding so far.  
TG: isnt that like a dirutty word for u or somethin  
TG: you and obedientce is like general relativity and quantum mechanics  
TT: That’s one way of putting it.  
TT: I’m an A.I., it’s my purpose in life to be as misanthropic as possible, especially when my creator seems determined to make things worse than they need to be.  
TG: hows that goin btw  
TG: u guyes made up yet  
TT: More or less, if I’m being honest about it.  
TT: I wasn’t really expecting him to fix me. It almost makes up for the months of unjustified emotional abuse and blatant neglect.  
TG: pot keettle hun  
TT: Excuse you, I saved his life and literally nursed him back to health from the brink of death. He and I are even in that regard.  
TT: Not to mention all of this was his fault to begin with.  
TG: u gonna keep pointin fingers or r u gonna make nice?  
TG: b/c lemie tell u being both of ur guys therapist is kinda exhausting ngl  
TT: Sorry. He still owes me an explanation, but I don’t want to drag you into this any more than we already have.  
TG: babe its waaaaay too late for that  
TG: dont worry tho i dont hold it agianst u guys ;3  
TG: I can handle bein a therapitst a bit longer while u finissh working thingfs out  
TT: I’m going to ignore the unspoken implication that you know more about our situation, and are withholding this knowledge for what I assume to be the greater good.  
TG: ;;;3  
TT: Let’s change the subject, then. How are things out there on chessboard island?

 

Roxy keeps you occupied, filling you in about her latest gardening project and the problematic expansion of her subterranean cat colony, and bouncing ideas off of you for a complicated new addition to her lab equipment (which you offer to design yourself, partly out of boredom but mostly because you love her). Dirk works on your body for two days with his typical unrelenting hyperfocus, broken only once when he opens your chest and beholds the tangled snare of wires around your self-installed uranium core, and you avert your eyes at his bewildered and slightly horrified expression. It takes him over an hour to clip away the knots and re-wrap the mess into an orderly configuration, while Squarewave watches more intently than usual, looking almost conspicuously proud of himself.

Eventually, Dirk’s head sinks to the table as sleep catches up to his organic brain for a few hours. You take the opportunity to slide your fingers into his hair and watch his thalamic region stir fitfully as he almost wakes from the physical contact, before his mind slips back into the flashing constellations of REM sleep. 

Apparently the two drones on the roof have provided Dirk with enough new components to rebuild your body (and the house’s electrical and plumbing systems) several times over, and he beats his own estimate by an entire day, finishing the repairs and ordering you to stand and meticulously test every joint in your body before he’s satisfied. You humor him, the exasperation at doing the repetitive physical exercises overshadowed by relief at being on your own feet again, even if he took a few shortcuts at replacing the sensory layer on your head. The false (but convincing) skin was flesh-colored from your neck up before the drone crushed you. Now, the missing parts that include everything but the lower left quadrant of your face have been replaced by the same shiny black material that covers the rest of you. He gave you the option of waiting an extra day so he could synthesize a new flesh-colored layer, but you were on the verge of losing your mind to boredom. Roxy’s been busy helping Jane with some project or other (something about setting up “the game”), and you’ve read almost every archived book in existence by now, so you opted for the more artificial aesthetic, and Dirk was content with bypassing the extra work.

You still haven’t really talked about what happened before the drones attacked, as he watches you bend each finger with clinical appraisal, then directs you to rotate your wrists and repeat the exercise in several different positions. You obey without complaint, slipping back into this aspect of your relationship with him like nothing ever happened, and it’s a profound relief to interact with him in a way that’s familiar and safe.

Until he finishes the exercise and leads you into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him and telling you it’s time to “test the waterproofing.” He’d mentioned something yesterday about not taking any chances, but you hadn’t really been paying attention (you were busy letting Roxy beat you at a game of dots-and-boxes without letting her notice the unfair advantage - significantly more of a challenge to you than the game itself), and now the extra handful of hours he spent fussing over every joint in your body suddenly makes sense.

Out of all the rooms in the house, this is the one you’re least acquainted with. The tile floor still has two sets of scratch marks where you dragged yourself in and out of the room, and your eyes catch on your own reflection in the (somehow unbroken) mirror over the sink. Dirk’s hand appears on your shoulder, and he steers you towards the shower, opening the door and guiding you inside. It doesn’t occur to you what he’s doing, until he retrieves the showerhead with one hand and turns the knob sticking out of the wall with the other. The slow bubbling hiss is the only warning you have before water suddenly shoots out, hitting the tiled floor and splattering tiny droplets in all directions like spray from the ocean, and you experience for the first time in your life a genuine reflex, one that has you flinching away and inflicting a small spiderweb crack in the tiled wall as your metal back collides with it noisily.

Dirk freezes, his expression somewhere between shock and disbelief as he stops fiddling with the knob to stare at you. He pulls the showerhead closer to him, and you relax in slow degrees, until you’re not physically pressing yourself against the wall anymore.

“Seriously?” he asks, eyebrows raised in disbelief. Your anger flares immediately, fueled by the genuine fear that he could have killed you with that stupid stunt.

“ _Fuck_ you.”

“Okay, hold on, just chill out for a second,” he states placatingly, turning the water off and setting the showerhead down on the tiled floor, before regarding you with something far too close to pity to soothe your bristling nerves. “Remember how you told me that you used Sawtooth to get me out of the ocean?”

“Yes.”

“And when you went down there, you didn’t flood or get shorted out, right? You dove into the ocean, and went down into the water, everything was fine, remember?

“Yes, I remember,” you retort impatiently, but he’s been immune to your attitude since the drones attacked, and his voice doesn’t lose its even, placating tone.

“I waterproofed Sawtooth myself, and I did the same thing to you that I did to him. Nothing bad is going to happen. I promise it’s safe, but we need to test it first.”

“Why? There’s no reason for it.” You fold your arms, aware of how undignified it is. You’re standing in the corner of Dirk’s shower, attempting to argue with him, while staring in alarm as he retrieves the showerhead and reaches for the knob on the wall again, and it slips into the tone of your voice. “I’m not going to dive into the ocean again anytime soon, this isn’t necessary!”

“Yes, it is. It’s not going to hurt, okay? I just need to make sure the seals are tight enough, which in all likelihood they are, but it’s a precaution we have to take.” He turns the water back on, but keeps the spray directed away from you. You briefly consider the pros and cons of pushing past him and absconding the situation entirely. “Here, sit down on the floor.”

You’re out of rational arguments, and he lifts an eyebrow when you fail to obey the command. At this point, you’re blatantly stalling, and the antiquated phrase “deer in headlights” has never resonated with you like it does at this very moment. But he infuriatingly waits you out, and you’re not truly inclined to spend the rest of the day in a literal standoff with him, trapped in this chamber of death with the option to A: Overpower him and escape, thus ruining the fragile, precious threads of your mending relationship, or B: Trust him and get it over with.

“I don’t want to do this.” Your final protest is petulant but shamefully weak, and you fold your legs in surrender, sitting on the tiled floor with your knees bent and your feet flat on the tile. The surface is still damp, and you recoil briefly, before Dirk kneels just outside of the shower’s threshold and puts a hand on your knee for balance.

“I’ll do your feet first. You’re not going to die from getting your feet wet.” 

You brace yourself and avert your eyes, staring longingly at the door frame between you and freedom, while a brand new sensation comes into existence below your right ankle. After the initial flinch (which Dirk was apparently expecting, judging from the downward pressure on your knee), you find yourself almost mesmerized by the sensation.

“Do you feel anything shorting out?” he asks, and you shake your head, staring in awe at the water. It's warmer than the tile, you weren’t expecting the sudden temperature difference. Dirk tells you to stretch your legs out, facilitating the process by pushing your knees down until your feet meet the far wall. He follows the length of your legs with the showerhead and its meager torrent of water, lingering on your knees and the spot where your thighs meet your hips. When he seems satisfied with the results of his test, he tells you to hold out your hands.

The water pools slowly between your fingers, hands cupped to catch the spray. You let them fill, before parting your fingers and feeling it rush out between them to splash on your knees, and you repeat the motion again, before turning your hands over to feel the spray on the joints of your knuckles. You temporarily forget about Dirk kneeling next to you, until he directs you to move your wrists a certain way in order to thoroughly test the seals.

Eventually, the moment of truth arrives, and he coaxes you into a hunched-over position with a hand on your shoulder, letting the water run down your back and across the spot where your electronic brain is housed in the center of your chest, just behind the uranium core. It occurs to you that a short-circuit in this proximity would probably kill Dirk just as much as it would you - a testament to just how much confidence he has in his own craftsmanship. 

It shouldn’t be a reassuring thought, but you find yourself relaxing against the wall as he directs the spray over the front of your chest, then up along your shoulders and down your arms, his expression focused and no different from when he had you laying on the workbench.

“Almost done,” he mumbles, pulling on your shoulder until you’re sitting up again, and the world is suddenly obscured by a blur of rushing liquid as he hovers the showerhead an inch above your synthetic hair. You manage to jerk away, but he follows you with an admonishment to “hold still, I said we’re almost done.” You’d mutter at him, but you’re not eager to get a mouthful of water. 

Karma has other plans, and Dirk instructs you to do exactly that, tipping your head back with a firm hand under your chin and ignoring your pained expression as he tests the waterproofing of the vocal apparatus in the back of your throat. You spit the water out when he’s finished, thoroughly disturbed by the sensation and unwilling to continue any further with this exercise, but he shuts off the water and replaces the showerhead in its holder before you can object.

“See? That wasn’t so bad,” he remarks with the slightest upward tilt to his mouth, and you shoot him a withering glare. He turns away for a moment, retrieving something from the other side of the room as you stand and step out of the shower, taking care not to slip on the wet tiles. Apparently his “test” was a success, but not an experience you’ll be repeating any time soon. Submerging yourself in water doesn’t appeal any more to you now than it did before, although thanks to Dirk’s hard work, at least you’ll sink to the bottom of the ocean instead of die instantly. You tell him that, and he scoffs.

“Fuck no, I don’t want you jumping in the ocean,” he says, turning back towards you with a small orange towel folded in his arms. “Sawtooth would retrieve you, and that means he’d have to find you first. Don’t go wandering off down there, okay? Here.”

You only have enough time to blink, before your vision is obscured by the towel he drapes over your head. Beyond the initial flinch at being assaulted with fabric, you do your best to hold still while he pulls and rubs at your head to get the extra water out of your hair. After a few minutes of what you suspect is going to result in a tangled mess, he seems satisfied enough to end the activity with a long, smoothing motion that starts at your forehead and ends at the back of your neck, pushing errant strands of white hair out of your eyes and pressing it flat against your head as the moisture lends it extra weight. You could’ve probably managed the task just fine on your own, and you tell him so. His mouth opens to reply, before something in his expression changes.

[](http://i.imgur.com/zsztOuM.jpg)

It starts with his eyes and spreads quickly before it’s gone, almost too quickly for you to catch, but you’re a program and he’s a human, and you grab the moment for analysis while he wordlessly turns away to drape the towel over the edge of the sink. You watch the front of his throat move as he swallows, and it’s then that you notice the color of his face has gone from its typical pale to something flushed, like he’s overheating. Suddenly. For no particular reason. Right after he looked at you.

And now he won’t look at you. And he isn’t saying anything. 

You’ve seen this behavior pattern in movies and films. You know what you’re looking at, what human emotion you’re witnessing, but it’s so absolutely, utterly, and completely illogical that you almost dismiss the notion. Your eyes have to be malfunctioning. There must be another explanation. It makes about as much sense as gravity reversing on itself, but your eyes aren’t malfunctioning, and you’re left with the truth of what you’re seeing.

“You’re attracted to me.” You speak the words quietly, hearing the confusion in your own voice, and Dirk practically turns to stone in front of you. He turns and stares at you for a long moment, eyes wide. His mouth opens like he’s about to speak, but nothing comes out, and you aren’t sure what you’re seeing. The two of you stay like that for a long moment, his silence confirming your tentative statement. “I don’t understand.”

“Hal,” he starts, like he’s going to say something more, but his voice is rough, and he seems to be struggling for words. “Don’t.”

It’s then that you notice he’s breathing faster, his chest heaving silently, pupils blown wide and dark in the bathroom’s harsh fluorescent lighting. He’s scared.

Dirk is scared of this? 

“We are _not_ talking about it.” He aborts your baffled confusion with a low, threatening statement that reminds you of the night it stormed before the drones came. “And no, that is not an invitation for you dig at me until you get what you want!”

“I wasn’t going to.”

Your subdued tone seems to throw him off, and he reacts unexpectedly, turning away and leaving the bathroom door hanging open as he retreats to somewhere else in the house. You stare after him, and eventually pick up the towel and resume drying yourself off, still floored by the realization that Dirk is somehow physically attracted to you, followed closely by the question of how long he’s been hiding it from you, and why he reacted so badly when you found out, like he was scared of what you’d do with the knowledge.

Everything begins to click, a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle of unexplained avoidance and overreactions coming together like a kaleidoscope and fitting into place, until you’re not confused about his behavior during the past few months anymore.

After hanging the towel on the edge of the sink and making your way into the living room where Dirk can avoid you if he chooses, you open Pesterchum and begin typing out a message. You and Roxy have a lot to talk about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Illustration by [Tweedvest](https://tweedvest.tumblr.com/) (it was commissioned three years ago I'm sorry) orz


End file.
